


The Birds. In New York

by Fenris



Category: Watchmen - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Crossover (Watchmen/The Birds), Hurt/Comfort, Kink Meme, M/M, Post-Keene, Post-Roche, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2010-11-13
Updated: 2011-12-05
Packaged: 2017-10-13 04:48:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 18
Words: 39,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/133115
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fenris/pseuds/Fenris
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>From this prompt on the WM Kinkmeme 2: Post-Keene, Ror basically gives Dan the cold shoulder for like 15 years. And then it happens - Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds. In New York.</p><p>Madness reigns, people getting pecked to death by armies of pigeons, Canadian geese beating up children and old people--what's the city's last vigilante to do?...</p><p>Rorschach has only one person to turn to; the fat, whimpering liberal who also happens to be a brilliant fucking ornithologist.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Dan Dreiberg and Hollis Mason had spent Wednesday evening sitting at Hollis' kitchen table getting pleasantly squiffed on Red White & Blue beer (Old Money Saver, Hollis called it). It had been a pleasant visit, with Dan happily listening to Mason tell some of his funnier Minutemen stories (he'd heard them all before, of course, but it didn't matter; he loved hearing Hollis tell them anyway).

Dan sat with one elbow on the table, chin resting in his hand as he smiled fondly at the old man and thought about the fact that all of the best conversations in his life seemed to happen at kitchen tables. As a boy listening to his mother tell stories about their eccentric relatives, as Nite Owl having lengthy discussions with his former partner (back in the days when Rorschach had still bothered to talk in sentences of more than three words), and right here, listening to war stories told by his oldest hero.

Hollis leaned forward and tapped his arm, breaking Dan's train of thought.

"Danny, it's pretty late. You'd better get on home, son." He got up, gathered up an armful of empty beer cans and put them in the sink. "Tell you what, though, on your way out let me show you my latest little restoration project. Come on, I've got to take Phantom out anyway."

Dan grinned. "Sure thing, let's go take a look."

It was a warm, muggy July night. Dan slung his jacket over his arm rather than put it on as they descended into the auto yard. Phantom trotted off in search of just the right tire to lift his leg over as they strolled across the yard to take a look at Hollis' latest project. It turned out to be an old Triumph 4A sports car. Hollis leaned under the open hood to show Dan his progress. He grimaced and pointed out a nest of tangled wires, half of which were disconnected.

"Soon as I get the electricals worked out, the rest of it'll go pretty quickly. Guy uptown brought it in for me to restore. I could use the money; otherwise I'd decline. I hate working on these old British jalopies." He touched the rats nest of wires. "Damn Lucas electrical system. All the wires are color coded, which sounds like a great idea until it gets to be a few years old and they all fade to the same color. Dirty gray." He shook his head. "You know why the British drink warm beer, don't you? Lucas refrigerators."

Dan chuckled. Then he looked up, frowning slightly. Mason looked at him, puzzled.

"What is it, Danny? You forget something?" He stopped as Dan held up a hand to shush him.

Taking a deep breath of the humid air that smelled of old motor oil and rusting metal and holding it, Dan listened intently. After a few moments, he pointed up into the sky.

"Hear that, Hollis? Listen."

Hollis listened. It was a quiet night and at first he had no idea what Dan was talking about. Then over the omnipresent city background murmur (pretty quiet in this neighborhood at this time of night) he heard a faint chirping and twittering, high up in the sky. He looked at Dan.

"Is that birds I hear?" he asked. Dan nodded, still frowning. "Huh! I'll be darned, I didn't know they flew at night."

The moon was full. As they stood watching with their heads tilted back, they saw tiny winged silhouettes cross the silvery orb, standing out in crisp contrast as they moved across the pale white face. Dan wished for his night vision goggles as he watched the shapes flit across the moon.

"Hollis, this is really strange. I'd swear those are all passerines, not nocturnal birds. They do fly in flocks at night, but only during migration. It cuts down on predation and helps keep them from overheating. This is really off-season for migration, though, it's early July. They should still be nesting and raising young at this point, not migrating."

Hollis grinned at him. "Listen to you, Bird Encyclopedia Brown."

Dan looked embarrassed. "Sorry, Hollis. Once you get me going on birds, I tend to just keep going."

The older man waved his hand dismissively. "I didn't mean anything bad by it Danny, it's fascinating that you know all these things, it really is." He yawned. "But it's getting late. I think we'd both better get to bed. C'mon boy!"

Phantom trotted over with a tongue-lolling doggy smile for both of them. Dan grinned and rumpled the old dog's ears, then waved goodnight to Hollis as he started for home.

As soon as he got back to the brownstone, he took a notebook, his goggles, and his best binoculars up to the roof. He put the goggles on, switched on the night vision and scanned the sky.

A steady stream of birds was still moving across the moon. Dan made notes, trying to get a rough estimate on numbers. He turned around, scanning with the binoculars now and realized that there were groups of flying silhouettes all over the sky, moving like tiny winged cutouts across the tarnished pewter clouds. There weren't just a few dozen flocks moving, there were hundreds.

"Wow."

As he watched, his smile faltered and a slight unease took hold of him as he noticed that many of the flocks were not moving in a straight line, but instead were wheeling in large circles. Wondering if this might mean some large and bizarre weather pattern was moving in, he watched for a while, made a few more notations, then yawned and realized that it definitely was time for bed.

He'd closed the roof access door behind him and was headed down the stairs when he was brought up short by a loud thump behind him. It sounded like someone up on the roof had thrown a bag of cement against the door.

"The hell?" He walked back upstairs to the access door and cautiously opened it. At first he saw nothing, and looked around, puzzled. Then he looked down and saw a large black and white seagull crumpled in a heap on the roof gravel, its neck twisted around at a severe angle.

'Great Black-Backed', he thought, noting the gull's size, the snowy white belly and head set off by the jet black wings. Its head rolled limply on the broken neck as he picked it up and he grimaced. "Sorry, big guy. What the heck were you thinking? Poor thing." He picked it up by one wing and carried it downstairs, the feathered body swinging limp as a rag doll. Dan tossed the gull's body in the dumpster out back and went to bed.


	2. Chapter 2

Walter Kovacs was headed to the newsstand to pick up his papers. Carrying his sign and dressed heavily as usual despite the miserably hot weather, his only sartorial concession to the heat and humidity an open jacket and the unbuttoning of the top three buttons of the worn dress shirt underneath.

The other concession he made to the heat was altering his usual path to the newsvendor's. Normally he walked there using one of several street routes, all of which allowed him to keep his ever-vigilant eye out for trouble. Today, however, he elected to take a route that wound through a small park. It added fifteen minutes to his walk, but the park's paths were mostly shaded and offered a bit of relief from the relentless heat.

A little duck pond occupied the center of the park. A few ducks and one bedraggled swan paddled lethargically around the greenish weed-choked water. A short distance away from one side of the pond was a group of a dozen or so small children and three young women clustered around some tablecloths loaded with picnic foods. The presence of a large sheet cake and a pile of colorfully wrapped parcels made it obvious that it was a birthday party. Several of the children were wearing paper party hats and clutching balloons as they chased each other around.

As he paused for a moment to watch them, Kovacs had to question the wisdom of parents who would bring their children outside for a party in this kind of heat. Surely they would have been far better off inside somewhere with air conditioning. As if she'd heard his thoughts, one of the women chaperoning the children looked up and scowled at him, evidently not liking what she saw.

"Stop looking at those kids! Get out of here, 'fore I call a cop on you!"

Incensed at the implication, Kovacs glared, then turned and stalked off without a word. As he walked up the path that led away from the pond to the park gates, several large shadows streaked over the grass. He glanced up and saw a small flock of brown and white geese coming in to land near the pond. Uninterested, he kept walking and followed a turn in the path that led into the small wooded area which bounded the east side of the park.

He'd gotten about fifty feet into the trees when he heard a woman's alarmed shout behind him and several high-pitched screams. They weren't the excited screams of children chasing each other; there was real terror in the cries. Kovacs wheeled and sprinted back the way he'd come.

What he saw as he came out of the woods and ran toward the duck pond brought him up short. Astonished, his eyes widened as he took in the scene. The children were not being chased or attacked by perverts, kidnappers, gang members or a vicious dog, one of which was what he'd expected to see. Geese were attacking them.

The geese he'd seen landing earlier were pursuing the children and their chaperones, hissing and striking at them with bills and wings. The children ran screaming as the three women shouted and waved their arms in a futile attempt to scare the birds off.

As he watched, nonplussed, he saw the swan from the pond knock a small boy down and bite at his head. The boy shrieked as the swan's head came up with a clump of hair in its bill and bright red blood streaked the boy's sandy hair. That galvanized Kovacs into action and he charged the bird.

"Get off!!" he shouted and swung his sign like a baseball bat, knocking the swan off the boy. It tumbled over and over, wings flapping wildly, and came to rest about six feet away from the child who lay face down, screaming and clutching at his bleeding head.

Kovacs, who knew nothing about swans or geese, dismissed the bird and moved to help the boy. He bent to pick the screaming child up off the ground.

_Crack!_

Sharp pain lanced up his leg. It felt like someone had taken a police baton to his shin. He whipped around to face the unfortunate officer who'd decided to attack him. Instead of a uniform, though, he was facing a blur of white feathers. A loud hissing filled his ears. _Crack! Crack!_ Two more blows, one to his knee and another across his temple knocked him sprawling, lights flashing across his eyes. Something grabbed his ear, hard, and a fresh flurry of blows from the bird's wings rained down on him, feeling exactly like hard punches.

Reeling from the absurdity of the fact that he was being quite effectively beaten up by a twenty five pound bird (and that said bird was making a really creditable effort to pull off his ear, _Ow!_ ), he grasped the bird's head and with an effort pried the clamped bill off of his abused ear. He rolled away from the attack and jumped to his feet.

Still hissing, the swan came at him again and he threw a savage kick at it, knocking it onto its side. As it started to get up, he pounced and grabbed it by its head and snaky neck, twisting hard. Bones crunched and the bird went limp.

Dropping the bird, he growled and shook his throbbing head, looking around. Most of the children had been herded up the hill and away from the pond by one of the chaperones and were being helped by other people. Besides the boy he'd rescued, there were only three children left near the pond who hadn't yet escaped to safety.

Two young girls huddled on the ground near the trampled chaos of food and tablecloths that were what remained of the party, too scared to run. He noted with approval that one of the two women who'd stayed behind had picked up a dead branch and was swinging it like a club, keeping several geese away from the girls. The other remaining child, a girl who looked to be about seven years old, was sitting on the nearby grass and weeping hysterically as two geese attacked her. The third woman from the party was still trying, ludicrously, to shoo the birds away. Kovacs stooped to snatch up his sign and ran toward them.

As he swung the sign and batted one goose away from the girl, the other goose knocked the woman off of her feet. She hit the ground hard and instead of getting up again she grabbed onto the girl, shielding her from the punishing wing blows and bites.

Always a quick learner in a fight, Kovacs lunged and neatly grabbed the second goose by the head and neck as if he'd been doing it all his life. With a quick motion, he snapped its neck as he'd done with the swan.

The goose that he'd swatted away was back on its feet and Kovacs crouched, hefting his sign and preparing for a swing that would knock the filthy creature's head clean off. Instead of attacking though, it uttered a raucous cry then turned and ran the other way, launching itself clumsily into the air, wings flapping hard.

The other geese, including the ones held at bay by the woman swinging the dead branch were doing the same thing. Slow, clumsy launches turned into powerful, graceful ascents and twenty seconds later Kovacs was watching the last of the children's attackers wing their way over the trees, flying west.

Kovacs looked down at the young woman crouched over the girl. She looked up at him, her eyes wide and shocked. Her light brown hair, previously captured in a neat French braid was a snarled mess, and her yellow blouse was covered with dirt and grass stains. He recognized her as the woman who had snapped at him earlier to get away from the children. Resisting the impulse to ask her if she still wanted to call the cops on him, he held out his hand.

"They're gone. Get up."

His gruff tone seemed to cut through the fog and she focused on him, grabbing his proffered hand and allowing him to pull her up off the ground. As she reached her feet she inhaled deeply, then half-gagged as she got a good whiff of him. She recoiled and let go of his hand as though a tarantula had just crawled out of his sleeve, moving quickly away from him.

Kovacs shrugged inwardly and supposed he didn't blame her. His own personal smell didn't quite equal the nauseating decayed-blood stench that permeated Rorschach's long-unwashed trench coat and uniform, but it had been about two weeks since he had last bothered to bathe, and with the heat and today's exertions he supposed that right now Kovacs' aroma came in a very close second to Rorschach's.

Flushing with embarrassment under his intent stare, the woman turned away and picked up the girl. The child clung to her like a frightened monkey as she straightened up, heaving shaky sobs, her face buried in the woman's ruined blouse.

Kovacs turned and looked back to where he'd left the boy with the bleeding scalp and saw that he was up and being attended to. Satisfied that things could proceed neatly without him and not eager to find out whether the woefully liberal police would try to arrest him for animal cruelty, he shouldered his sign and started to walk away.

"Hey!"

He turned and looked at the woman in the yellow blouse. Her voice was shaky-the adrenaline was starting to wear off, and soon the rest of her would be as shaky as she sounded now-and she took a few steps toward him.

"Thank you, I'm…I-" She stopped, clearly at a loss for what to say next. She looked at the ground to his right and mumbled " _Sorry"_ , before turning to walk toward her friends.


	3. Chapter 3

Bernie saw a lot of people come and go while he sat at his newsstand peddling papers, because almost everyone bought newspapers, and sooner or later he saw them all.

In addition to the scrawny black kid who liked to hang out for hours, tucked against the hydrant next to the newsstand while reading Bernie's comic books, there were lots of other people who came by every day.

There were the blue-collar types who didn't talk to him because they were just too tired and intent on either getting to their jobs or getting home to bed.

There were the business suits who didn't speak because they couldn't be bothered and whose eyes slid right past him as they handed him money as if Bernie were a piece of furniture.

There were the katieheads who liked to hang around the stand and try to impress each other and Bernie with what badass rebels they were before they got bored and start squabbling, which is when Bernie would yell at them and run them off. At this point, he figured it was just a game for them, but so far they hadn't hurt anything so he really didn't care.

There were the street people and the crazies. Most of them were just sad, really. Bernie knew that for some of them, the few minutes they spend talking to him (or listening while he talked to them) was the only real human interaction they had all day. So they were okay. Mostly.

Then there were the disturbing ones.

For example, the guy who came by first thing every morning as soon as Bernie opened for business. Good looking in a mild preppie way, always dressed nicely but not flashily and wearing a tan sports coat. He looked like someone's nice older brother just home from college. Every morning he would politely ask Bernie for a Gazette and politely hand him money with a well-bred cipher of a smile. But when Bernie looked in his eyes he could see something hungry, decaying and sour with sharp ravenous teeth roiling behind those very polite eyes. Bernie knew that this one was up to something bad. Maybe at home, maybe at work, maybe in some secret place that only he knew about, but Bernie just knew that this guy was doing something terrible and that one day Bernie was going to see headlines about him.

Then there was the ginger derelict who carried around a battered "The End is Nigh" doomsday sign. He came by every afternoon like clockwork for his copy of the New Frontiersman. Bernie had never learned what his name was. He just thought of him as The End is Nigh Guy.

The first time he'd seen him approach the newsstand holding that ridiculous fucking sign, Bernie's initial thought was that here was a man who pretty much looked like Howdy Doody made flesh; disheveled carroty hair, freckles everywhere that Bernie could see, pug nose and ears that stuck out like barn doors. Then he'd stopped directly in front of Bernie, pinned him with a level look and in a low gravelly voice asked for a New Frontiersman. Any resemblance to Howdy Doody that Bernie might have imagined to begin with up and vanished in that instant.

The man had the intense, dour stare of a Puritan minister and an expression that said he knew very well what you and your fellow miscreants were up to, and he didn't approve of it one bit. Bernie had never seen a guy that short who could loom over you like this one could.

One thing Bernie did know. If the End is Nigh Guy ever did snap he was the type who'd take people along with him. It would probably involve something spectacular like a chain saw, or a sniper rifle and a high vantage point, and result in a whole lot of dead people. Another one who was going to generate headlines some day. In the meantime, Bernie was determined to always be very, very polite to him. Even on the days when he smelled like an open landfill in August.

 _Speak of the devil, here comes Cotton Mather himself._ Bernie hailed him with his customary polite greeting. "Hello sir. How's the end of the world coming along today?"

"Hrmh. Slower than anticipated. Expect it soon, though. Is it in yet?"

Today the End is Nigh Guy looked like he'd been in a fight. There was a large bruise blooming on his forehead and a smaller one that was just starting to discolor one side of his face. One of his ears was abraded and bleeding. Bernie looked nervously at the trickle of blood that ran down from the ear, disappearing under the collar of his mangy jacket.

"Yes sir, I have it right here. Uh, did you know you're bleeding?" Bernie touched his own ear, and then pointed at the other man's injury. "What happened to your ear?"

The other two customers currently at the newsstand, a loudmouthed but harmless regular named Frank and a strange guy who was walking a brace of shaggy white terriers, looked on with interest. The End is Nigh Guy glowered at Bernie (whose heart skipped a beat) and the other two men for a long moment before he admitted, "Swan bit me." He pointed back the way he'd come. "Back in the park."

Frank started laughing, netting an intensified glower in his direction. He fished around in his pants pocket for a moment, then brought out a crumpled bill and held it out toward the derelict.

"Aw buddy, if you're that hungry here's five bucks, go get a sandwich for Chrissake."

The glower became a thoughtful, narrow-eyed glare. Bernie wondered whether today might be The Day and prepared himself to see just how one man could kill another with a copy of the New Frontiersman. After an uncomfortable moment the End is Nigh Guy appeared to think better of it, however, and turned back to Bernie, dismissing Frank.

"Swan, geese were attacking children in park. Helped drive them off." He re-shouldered his sign and Bernie realized that there was a smear of blood on it. A few fluffy white feathers were stuck in the blood. This was just too strange, he thought.

"You're kidding! The geese were going after kids? That's weird, were the kids maybe bothering them? Going near their babies or something?"

The smaller man shook his head emphatically, annoyed. "No. Children weren't anywhere near them. No baby geese either."

Kovacs was more then ready to be done with this conversation. He'd already talked to these people far more than he wanted to and he had more important things to do. Moving away, he skimmed his gaze over the newsstand shelves looking for interesting headlines. He stopped and picked up a copy of the Examiner.

Normally this particular header wouldn't have caught his attention but considering what had just happened, birds were on his mind. The title read:

" _ **Pigeons Sick of Breadcrumbs?**_ "

He skimmed the article, then went back and re-read it carefully. The playfulness of the headline belied the article's content. A homeless man had been found dead in Central Park two nights ago with multiple lacerations. Which wasn't unusual by itself; what was unusual was that he was discovered lying under a blanket of roosting pigeons. The article included a quote from the jogger who'd found the body.

" _It was the most screwed up thing I've ever seen. I thought the pigeons were sitting all crowded together on a big rock. All I could see was this big mass of birds. Then they got spooked when I came up to them, I guess, and they all took off at once. Then I saw the dead guy and I just lost my breakfast, you know? They had been pecking at the guy, and messing all over him, it was the most disgusting thing I ever saw._ " The article went on to identify the dead man as one Samuel Coates, age 67, no known relatives.

"Very interesting, I heard about that."

The voice came from his left. Kovacs turned to find the heavyset man in the light gray suit peering over his shoulder at the article.

"I understand that the pigeons weren't just roosting on the man, they had actually been feeding on him. I heard that the poor fellow didn't have much of a face left when they found him."

Frank laughed and chimed in, "Welcome to New York, even our pigeons will fuck you up!" He glanced over Kovacs' other shoulder at the article. "Come on, you're not suggesting the pigeons actually mugged that guy? That's just a fun headline. I say the guy had a heart attack or got kacked by a bunch of katieheads out for fun, then the rats got to him. The pigeons just thought he was a big warm rock to sit on."

"Perhaps." The man in the gray suit looked like he far preferred his carnivorous pigeon theory but was prepared to let it go.

Kovacs wasn't really paying attention to the conversation. One of the terriers was sniffing at his ankles. He tensed, but resisted the impulse to kick it away. The other terrier sat and looked up at him, panting, its pink tongue lolling out past the small, sharp white teeth, dripping in the heat. The wet, curled tongue looked faintly obscene, and the noise the dog made as it suddenly licked its chops and snapped its jaw shut sent a frisson of disgust up his spine.

The man in the suit clucked to the dogs and they moved away, looking up at him expectantly. Kovacs relaxed a bit. The man looked at him a bit oddly, then touched the brim of his hat and nodded toward Bernie. With a polite "Good afternoon, gentlemen," he went on his way.

At that point, Kovacs glanced across the street and saw a familiar face exit the Gunga Diner. The man looked around, adjusted his glasses and walked away, heading up the street. Without another word, Kovacs paid the newsvendor for the papers, picked up his sign and walked off in the same direction.

Daniel had put on more weight, he noticed. He was also walking with more purpose than usual, which piqued Kovacs' interest as he shadowed the other man at a discreet distance.

It had been a long time since he had spoken to his former partner, but he couldn't seem to break the habit of keeping tabs on him whenever the opportunity arose. At least once a week as either Kovacs or Rorschach, he found himself shadowing Daniel when he went out, curious in spite of himself to see what the man was up to. Which, according to his surveillance, wasn't much. From what he could tell, Daniel's current social life seemed confined to his weekly visits to Hollis Mason, and the occasional casual date. Perhaps a guilty conscience kept him from enjoying his freedom more.

He tried, unsuccessfully as usual, to master the tangle of unpleasant emotions that always surfaced when he saw his former partner and left him feeling mildly depressed. Regardless of the fact that Daniel had broken his trust and turned his back on their calling when he'd stopped being Nite Owl and that they hadn't been partners for years, Daniel had been a fellow mask. As such, Rorschach still felt an obligation to watch over him in some small way, even if it was just to keep track of his movements. (And if Walter's ghost sometimes stirred in his dreams and whispered otherwise, Rorschach never acknowledged it to himself or wrote of it in his ledger.)

Daniel would have been able to tell him in a moment about why the birds had attacked the children in the park, Kovacs was sure. He thought back to various conversations where Daniel had attempted to educate him on one facet or another of avian wildlife, all of which he'd simply let flow in one ear and out the other. He was interested in what made humans tick, not animals. For the first time, he regretted not having paid more attention.

When Daniel reached his destination, the library, Kovacs stopped and watched him disappear inside. Following him inside wasn't really an option. Street people carrying doomsday signs attracted too much attention when they went inside places like that. Besides, it was time to get ready to go to work. He turned and headed off toward the alley where his face and uniform lay faithfully waiting for him.


	4. Chapter 4

Evening found Dan puttering around his kitchen humming to himself while trying to put together a chicken salad sandwich with one hand and hold onto the first few pages of his draft research paper with the other hand as he tried to proofread while making his sandwich.

It felt good to be working on a hard science paper again. He loved the poetry and imagery involved in writing pieces like _Blood From the Shoulder of Pallas_ (which had finally been scheduled for publication in the Journal of the American Ornithological Society that fall), but writing a serious ornithological article made him feel like he was contributing something real to the birding community. The anomalous migration patterns he’d observed from his roof over the last two days were like nothing he’d ever seen or heard of. There had to be something behind it, maybe some kind of atmospheric disturbance that was causing this.

Beside the thrill of writing seriously again, working on the paper was also helping to lift his spirits. Dan had been feeling increasingly depressed lately and was finding it harder and harder to come up with reasons to go out and just do things. This just seemed like a gift designed to lift him up out of the dumps and give him something useful to do.

He had braved the afternoon heat and gone to the library earlier that day to look over Northeast weather patterns from the last few months’ worth of regional newspapers. He’d also been studying his copy of Joe Westwood’s book on migration patterns, but so far he wasn’t finding any parallels.

Maybe it was time to check in with Cornell and see what they could tell him. _I’ll have to give Parker a call in the morning. Actually, he’s probably still in the lab, I should try him now_. He finished his sandwich, then picked up the phone and dialed an Ithaca number. At the third ring, an operator answered.

“Cornell Lab of Ornithology, how may I direct your call?”

“Professor MacLaren’s office, please.” The phone rang a few more times, then was picked up.

“MacLaren.”

“Parker, it’s Dan Dreiberg. I knew you’d still be in your office, you ever think about going home? How are you?”

“Dan! Good to hear from you! Thought you dropped off the face of the earth, man, what’s happening? You finally going to come up here and give another lecture?”

“No, Parker, sorry, I’m not calling about that. Uh, there’s actually something a little weird going on down here and I wanted to see if you’d heard anything about it. Over the last few days I’ve been seeing a lot of unusual movement around here. It’s almost like a mass migration, except from what I can tell the flocks are just sort of circling the area, not moving on. And there’s a big increase in the numbers of non-migrants too, like crows. It’s completely bizarre. I wanted to check in with you and see if you’ve heard any other reports of unusual movement around New England.”

“Huh. You know, I was actually going to give you a call, now that you mention it. We had someone from the Jamaica Bay refuge call into the New England sighting hotline yesterday who reported huge numbers of gulls and pelagics massing out in the Channel, and I saw another report from Rockaway that said there’s something similar going on out in the bay.“

Dan’s eyebrows lifted. “I haven’t been out to the water, I didn’t know about that. I’ve just been observing from my roof, but I’ll tell you it’s almost scary. Just huge, huge numbers. If it were migration season, I’d guess that there was something going on weather-wise that’s turning the Island into some huge migrant trap, but you know nothing around here is migrating right now. I wonder if there’s something going on out at sea that’s driving the pelagics in.”

Parker was silent for a moment, and Dan heard papers shifting on the other end of the line. “Nope, I don’t see anything in the Atlantic weather patterns that would do that. Now I’m kind of curious--Dan, if you get a chance, could you head down to Jamaica Bay, maybe, and check it out? I’d love to get down there myself for a few days, it sounds like something really cool might be happening, but I’ve got classes and a grant application deadline, I can’t get away.”

“I can do that. I’ll go down to Jamaica Bay tomorrow and observe for a while, then I’ll call you back and let you know what I see.”

“Do me a favor, call it in to Dr. Hayward up at the IFO in Machias also, will you? She’s coordinating the New England RBA hotlines and bird counts right now.

Dan hesitated, frowning. “I don’t know, Parker. I haven’t talked to Maggie in years. She probably won’t be thrilled to hear from me. Why don’t I just give you the figures and you can call her?”

“Are you kidding? Dan, you two dated for about five minutes in grad school twenty-two years ago. She’s been married for about ten years now, I think it’s safe to say she’s over the Dreiberg magic.”

Dan snorted, and smiled despite himself. “Fuck you.”

Parker just laughed. “Dinner and a movie first. Somewhere nice, I know you can afford it. Seriously, man, give Maggie a call. I’m sure she’d be happy to hear from you. You should really talk to her anyway if you want to know what’s being called in for rare sightings, she has the best network of field observers that I know of and they report in to her daily.”

“All right. Look, I’ve got to go, Parker, I’ll talk to you later.”

The conversation with MacLaren had brought Dan down a bit. As he put his dish in the sink he sighed, realizing that he wanted something sweet. He peered into the candy jar and grimaced. Crap, empty. No cheesecake left in the fridge, either. _Damn, did I eat all of that already?_ He rubbed at his growing paunch, frowning. _I have to watch it; I am eating way too much lately. I really need to start jogging, do something to deflate this spare tire._

Dan’s roving gaze stopped at a familiar canister on the counter. He hesitated, then opened it and took out a few cubes of Sweet Chariot. Really, he had no idea why he kept buying them. He preferred granulated sugar in his coffee. But he just couldn’t shake the habit. (And, he had to admit to himself that if he stopped buying them it would feel too final, like shutting a door that he’d purposely left ajar.)

Unwrapping a cube, he popped it into his mouth and let the sugar dissolve slowly while he smoothed the dark green wrapper against the palm of his hand and stared at it.

A few months ago he’d found a pile of those wrappers behind his refrigerator (testament to how seldom he cleaned behind the fridge), their waxed paper faded to a light gray-green. He had spent a few minutes just standing and looking at the old wrappers, feeling an odd mixture of annoyance (it was just like Rorschach to ignore the trashcan that stood right next to the fridge), amusement (it’d probably been Rorschach’s idea of a joke), and depression (because of course no one tossed Sweet Chariot wrappers behind his fridge or anywhere else, nowadays).

 _I wonder what he’s doing right now?_ Dan crumpled the wrapper into a tiny ball and tossed it into the trash. _I wonder if he’s still alive?_ Dan hated the fact that he had no way to find out whether his former partner was alive or dead. All he had to go on when he got curious about what the man was doing were media reports of Rorschach’s activities, and the occasional bit of police gossip that Hollis passed along from his friends on the force.

There had been no mention of Rorschach activity or sightings in the local news for the last month and a half. His ex-partner was either being unusually low profile or something bad (or even fatal) had happened to him.

 _Or maybe_ , he thought, _he’s finally had a complete breakdown and whoever he is when he’s not Rorschach is locked up in Bellevue or St Vincent’s dangerous ward, just another nameless crazy._ That thought chilled him right through. _Maybe I should start checking local psychiatric hospitals, see if there have been any recently admitted cases in the last month or so that could possibly be him._

The unpleasant vision of Byron Lewis sitting in his locked ward up in Maine surfaced and he cringed. A few years ago Dan had accompanied Hollis up to the asylum near Augusta to visit the former Minuteman. Byron hadn’t said much, just a few halting sentences about how good it was to see Hollis. But over the loose and trembling mouth his eyes had met and held Dan’s for a long moment and those frightened eyes had said that he didn’t understand this, any of it, and would someone please, _please_ explain it to him?

They had driven back to New York in silence, and Hollis had never asked Dan to go with him to visit Byron again.

The thought of Rorschach in his unmasked guise sitting in a locked ward somewhere, finally lost to his inner horrors and waiting, perhaps, for someone to come and explain what was going on upset Dan almost as much as the notion that Rorschach might be dead, might have finally sustained a mortal injury in some fight and made his way to somewhere hidden and private to die alone like a wild animal.

Dan scrubbed at his face with his hands, suddenly feeling very tired and very old.

“Ah, buddy, where are you? I hope you’re all right.”

And right then, more than anything else in the world, Dan wanted it to be eighteen years ago. Sitting at this table full of tonight’s plans, unable to keep an affectionate grin of anticipation from spreading across his face as his partner walked through the door full of a coiled energy and enthusiasm that radiated off of him like heat shimmering off the July sidewalks.

Almost equally strong was the sudden urge to go downstairs, put on Nite Owl’s uniform again, and just go out and _find_ him. To take charge of things once again. Dan rubbed at his mouth, tasted lingering sweetness.

He sat at the table, unmoving, for a very long time as darkness fell around the brownstone and the city’s night life stirred into motion outside the dusty windows.


	5. Chapter 5

As he did every night, later that evening Rorschach put on his true face, pulled on his spotless artful gloves and ventured out into the petri dish of decay that was his city, an antibody seeking out the most pernicious viruses. He knew that he was only prolonging the city’s death, the infection was much too severe to ever cure, but one did what one could.

The night was cooler than the broiling day, but the air was still miserably hot and muggy. Each breath took a small effort and felt like breathing in damp flannel.

Even the whores seemed unable to muster up their usual level of contention tonight. A few of them gave it a halfhearted try, offering up their customary obscene suggestions while displaying expanses of revolting sweaty skin and almost, but not quite, daring to touch him. As always, he brushed past them as if they weren’t there, their parting angry invective falling on deaf ears.

For the thousandth time he wondered why they bothered. He was vaguely aware that he seemed to be an object of both loathing and fascination for most of the street whores, although for the life of him he couldn’t understand the fascination part of it. (It never occurred to him that any working girl who managed to actually nail Rorschach could demand top bragging rights among her fellow hookers for the rest of her life.)

Criminals seemed to agree with the listless whores that it was too hot and humid to be out exerting themselves, and the first half of Rorschach’s night was achingly dull. Things finally got interesting a few hours before dawn, though, when he came across a pair of thieves who’d just finished stomping their victim unconscious after dragging him into a narrow alley.

The two muggers had fished their victim’s wallet out of his pocket and were busy digging through it when they heard Rorschach clear his throat and realized that they had company.

As the thieves looked up and saw Rorschach leaning casually against the wall watching them, he growled. "Interrupting?"

The man holding the victim’s wallet threw it to the ground and reached behind his back. His hand came back into sight holding an impressively large knife and he snarled at the vigilante. "Fuck you, freak. I’ve been waitin’ to run into you." He grinned. "Let’s go, fuckwad."

His opponent was a big, muscular man and he handled the knife like he knew what he was doing. Rorschach smiled, unseen behind his shifting face. After a stingy beginning, the night was finally being generous to him. He growled and launched himself savagely into the fray.

As he sidestepped the man’s first attack, he noticed with annoyance that his opponent’s companion was taking the better part of valor and scaling the fire escape like a spider monkey.

Distracted by the realization that one of the scum was getting away, he barely avoided a low, vicious slash at his leg that almost caught him behind the knee. This particular cockroach really did know what he was doing. Rorschach turned his full attention to the fight.

Several energetic minutes later, the knife fighter was finally down and out. As Rorschach straightened up, something heavy crashed to the ground less then a foot away from him, peppering him with dust and bits of what felt like gravel. He looked down at the remains of a shattered cinderblock, then up.

The second thief had evidently rediscovered his courage as soon as he’d reached the roof. Instead of fleeing, he had decided to stay and try some aerial bombardment. As Rorschach looked up he saw motion at the roof’s edge and a square object sailed out into the air, catching the streetlight for a second before it arced down toward him.

He jumped back as another cinderblock smashed to the ground nearby and heard a faint _"Fuck!"_ from somewhere above. Looking up again, he saw the second mugger lean over the edge of the roof and look down at him, partly illuminated by the streetlight. The man was evidently out of cinderblocks, because instead of lobbing another missile he spat down into the alley, extended both middle fingers in Rorschach’s general direction, then wheeled and disappeared.

Being doubly flipped off by human refuse was not on Rorschach’s free list. A shot with the grappling gun brought him up to the rooftop in moments, and the chase was on.

***

Forty five minutes later as he jumped the space between yet another two buildings with his quarry still an entire rooftop away from him, a tiny part of Rorschach was wishing that this particular scum had simply run to begin with instead of hanging around to try and brain him with cinderblocks. Because then he would have been long gone by the time Rorschach had finished with his knife-wielding friend. But he _had_ stayed, and as a result Rorschach was now involved in a drawn-out pursuit of a man who evidently had some antelope in his ancestry, judging from the way he ran. And jumped, seemingly effortlessly, from rooftop to rooftop.

Normally Rorschach had more than enough speed, stamina, and athletic prowess to catch any malfeasant who tried to outrun him. But much as he hated to admit it, he was starting to think this one might be the exception. Three quarters of an hour into the chase and he was no closer to catching the man. He’d developed a painful stitch in his side and trying to extract sufficient oxygen from the hot, soupy air was becoming a real struggle. Much as he hated the idea, Rorschach was starting to think that he might have to break off this pursuit to avoid the humiliating and dangerous (but increasingly likely) possibility of his passing out.

Because he’d seen Daniel not twelve hours ago, it was impossible not to compare the current situation with how things would have gone if he’d been patrolling with Nite Owl. And right now it was impossible for him to not feel just a little bitter about the fact that if Nite Owl _had_ been with him, his partner would have collared this second thief before he’d even reached the fire escape.  
But of course his ex-partner hadn’t been there and so Rorschach found himself reluctantly ready to admit that this particular bit of (very speedy) scum had outrun him.

However, Fate decided to step in at that point and be kind. As his quarry neared the roof’s edge he made the mistake of looking back over his shoulder and taking just a moment too long to check on Rorschach’s proximity before leaping the space between buildings. As a result, he misjudged his jump.

Rorschach watched the man launch himself toward the neighboring roof, then drop out of sight. A loud, high scream rang off the surrounding building walls, and shut off suddenly as something heavy caromed off something metallic with a loud clang, then crashed to the ground.

Slowing to an unsteady walk, Rorschach reached the roof’s edge and peered over it. The body of the mugger lay below, sprawled in the alley beside a dumpster like a thrown rag doll, limbs and neck all at wrong angles.

Panting, he silently counted off a full minute. The body didn’t move. Satisfied, Rorschach slowly sank down to half-sit, half-sprawl on the roof, one arm hooked over the roof’s edge. As he gasped for breath, his pounding heart felt like it might literally shake out of his chest and he could feel the sweat dripping down from under his mask, running down into his scarf. After a quick look around, he pushed his mask up to the bridge of his nose so he could gulp in larger lungfuls of the humid air.

He undid his scarf, which felt wet enough to wring out. He also unbelted his trench coat and opened it up. As he opened the coat he imagined that he could almost see the heat rising in waves off his overheated body. Gray spots bloomed in his field of vision and, alarmed, he concentrated on breathing evenly and willed himself not to pass out, gritting his teeth in anger with himself. He’d badly misjudged how much the humidity and heat would magnify the toll taken on his body by the lengthy pursuit, and how seriously dehydrated he was.

 _Just rest here for a few minutes, then have to go find water_ , he thought. He closed his eyes and focused on slowing his breathing.

***

With a start, he groaned and pulled himself up into a sitting position. He realized that he’d been lying slumped against the edge of the roof, hovering between sleep and unconsciousness. And had been so for a while, it seemed, since the sky was now noticeably lighter. _Bad, very bad_ , he chided himself, rubbing at his eyes through the mask.

A fluttering noise and the sound of movement close by brought him fully alert in an instant and he opened his eyes and looked around, moving quickly to get his feet under him. As he stood up, he realized that he was no longer alone on the roof. He had company. Plenty of company, actually. He drew in a long, deep breath, and the hairs on his arms and the back of his neck rose.

Hundreds of pigeons had flown in quietly to land on the roof while he was half-dozing, half-unconscious. A milling carpet of fat, feathered bodies, gray and black and white, they covered the roof up to its edges, crowded on top of the little utility shed and the half-dozen vent pipes and chimneys that dotted the roof. A raft of them stood just a few feet away from him, cooing and clucking amongst themselves. There were so many birds that he could smell them, a dusty, slightly acidic odor. He rolled his mask back down over his nose and mouth and felt a little less exposed.

Scattered among the pigeons were dozens of larger black birds that moved among them like small dark ships maneuvering through a gray sea dotted with whitecaps. One of the big black birds paced up to Rorschach, picking its way delicately through the milling pigeons, its gait prim and almost fussy in its precision. The bird stopped at his feet and looked up, cocking its head and considering him with eyes like polished onyx beads. Its beak was much larger and heavier than the pigeons’ thin bills, he noticed.

Rorschach knew it was just an animal, but there was a disturbing illusion of intelligent consideration in the way that it cocked its head and regarded him out of one glittering black eye, as if deciding what to do with him. The bird gave an almost comical little hop forward, dipped its head down and tapped his boot, hard, with its sharp heavy beak. Rorschach pulled his foot back quickly and almost, _almost_ kicked the bird away from him. As he drew his foot back, though, the newspaper story about the dead homeless man covered in pigeons flashed through his mind and he heard the man with the shaggy white dogs talking with relish about pigeons eating the dead man’s face.

Reason told him that it was a ridiculous story, and that it was beyond ridiculous to feel apprehensive about such fragile-looking little creatures as these, with their tiny beaks and claws. He could kill half a dozen of them with one well-placed stamp of his boot.

Instead of kicking the bird, he slowly and deliberately placed his foot flat on the ground. The black bird stalked back and forth, still looking up at him. Rorschach took one slow careful step forward toward the bird, careful to make no sudden or jerky movements. As if he’d passed some kind of test, the black bird moved out of his way, pecking at a few slow-moving pigeons as it went.

Walking slowly and carefully, Rorschach moved across the roof toward the ladder to the fire escape. The birds moved out of his way lazily, as if he were of no more concern to them than another bird, not a trace of fear or nervousness in their demeanor. A few pigeons reached out and pecked experimentally at his pants legs as he passed them. He tensed as they did, but each time they seemed to lose interest immediately and it went no further than that.

Once on the fire escape, he moved quickly down to the alley. As he walked past the body of the mugger there was a strange rushing noise from above, like a faint roar. He looked up and saw a dark cloud rise from the roof, dispersing itself into a confetti swirl of winged silhouettes against the pale purple sky. He tensed for a moment, half-expecting them to descend into the alley. But they flew off instead, quickly disappearing from view and he relaxed, rebuking himself for having such a childish reaction. Of course they flew away, that’s what birds did.

 _Foolish. Letting incident in park and ridiculous story make you run away from a flock of birds. Stupid. Plenty of real things in the world to worry about._

He left the alley and started the long walk back to his apartment, hoping to stow his uniform and get back before the other tenants were up and moving. _Get back, rest, rehydrate, eat something---should replenish salt, too_ , he thought, trying to remember whether there were any saltine crackers left in the battered biscuit tin inside his apartment cupboard, what else he had on hand for food and how much bottled water he had left.

***

Bone-tired and still a bit dizzy, walking back to his apartment was taking longer than he expected. Rorschach was relieved to see that he was finally passing the little grocery store that stood about a block away from the back alley where he habitually stored his face and uniform. He noted that the protective grates over the front windows were rolled up, but the Closed sign was still on the door.

A scream shattered the early morning quiet. He stopped and cocked his head, trying to pinpoint its origin. It came again, a woman’s scream, high-pitched and terrible, from somewhere behind the store.

A second, deeper voice shouted in terror and he heard running footsteps moments before a young man in a dark blue delivery uniform burst out of the alleyway between the grocery store and the dry cleaner’s next door, his face chalk-white. Without a word, the man ran to a bread delivery van parked at the curb and scrambled into the driver’s seat.

As the engine roared to life, Rorschach shouted at him to stop. The man snapped his head around to look at Rorschach, his eyes wide and rolling, whites standing out in a perfect ring around dark irises. Gears clashed and ground as he shoved the clutch gracelessly in and the van lurched forward. Tires squealed as the vehicle pulled away from the curb, its fender catching and scraping on a fire hydrant. The delivery van slewed into the street, accelerated wildly around the corner and was gone.

Rorschach ran down the alley. As he emerged into the area behind the store, the first thing he saw was a woman standing by a dumpster about fifteen feet away from the store’s back door, her hands clutching at the back of her head. He recognized her as the storeowner’s wife. She was staring down at something beside the dumpster and wailing.

As Rorschach moved toward her he saw with unease that a row of pigeons was perched along the back of the dumpster. Unease became alarm as he looked up and realized that he and the woman were far from alone.

Everywhere that he could see, there were birds. Birds clustered on top of the dumpster, lining the roof of the store and the electrical lines strung between buildings, sitting on top of the chain link fence that ran between the store and the buildings behind it. They looked like the same ones he’d seen before; pigeons and the larger black birds. There were also many other big white and gray birds, which he recognized as seagulls. Unlike the ones he’d encountered on the roof, though, these birds were all restless, agitated and fluttering.

As he approached the dumpster he wasn’t surprised to see a pair of legs sticking out from behind it; he’d already guessed that it was probably something like that. He hoped it wasn’t the storeowner, but from the way the owner’s wife was keening, odds were good that it was. _Early morning robbery_ , he thought, anger swelling up inside him. Normally he had little use for foreigners, especially those who couldn’t be bothered to learn English. But the middle-aged Vietnamese couple who owned this store worked hard, kept it clean, didn’t price gouge and had been polite to Kovacs on the few occasions that he had stopped there.

Rorschach was already considering where to go and whose bones he might have to break in order to find the man’s killers as he rounded the dumpster. He stopped dead in his tracks with a " _Hnk_!" of shock. Adrenaline washed through him, driving back the last of his fatigue.

The storeowner sat propped up against the wall by the dumpster, his legs spread out straight in front of him, hands lying limp in his lap. Dark, bloody eye sockets were turned upward in a final empty stare from the remains of his torn and ruined face. The man’s clothes were ripped in hundreds of places and his shirt hung in bloody tatters like the skin underneath.

Tearing his gaze away from the body, Rorschach looked up at the birds and saw that many of them were spattered with blood. One of the black birds held a bloody scrap of meat in its beak. As he watched, the bird tipped its head up and gobbled the morsel down, snapping its beak a few times before it swallowed.

The storeowner’s wife wailed again, and a ripple of agitation and flapping wings ran across the mass of birds. A few of them fluttered up, then settled down again, moving restlessly.

Still trying to process everything he was seeing, Rorschach instinctively knew immediate danger when faced with it. He glanced at the back door of the store, saw that it was shut and hoped it wasn’t locked. Reaching out, he put a hand on the woman’s shoulder to get her attention. Up until then, he wasn’t even sure she knew that he was there, but she turned to face him.

"Quiet!" he growled at her, knowing as he said it that she wouldn’t understand him. She looked at him uncomprehendingly out of howling eyes, one hand still wound into her hair, keening more softly now. He held a gloved finger up in front of his mouth in a shushing gesture then pointed at the agitated birds. Understanding dawned in her face as she followed his gesture and saw the nervous fluttering and rows of glittering black eyes watching them.

Moving slowly as he had earlier on the roof, Rorschach grasped the woman’s wrist and walked toward the store’s back door, bringing her along with him. She went reluctantly, her free hand clamped over her mouth as if she had to physically hold in her grief.

They reached the door and Rorschach let go of her wrist to try the doorknob. The door was locked. He turned to the woman to find out whether she had keys, ready to pantomime turning a key in a lock and realized that she was walking back toward the dumpster. She stooped to pick something up off the ground and stood up holding an empty wine bottle. Her features twisted in rage.

He hissed "No!" and lunged at her, but was just a fraction of a second too late to keep her from hurling the bottle at the birds perched on the dumpster. The bottle struck a gull and knocked it twitching to the ground.

For a moment, nothing moved. One bird uttered a loud cry like a rusty gate hinge. Then with a massive roar of wings, they all rose into the air.

As they descended the woman screamed and fell to her knees, covering her head. Rorschach ran toward her, batting attacking birds out of his way as they swirled around him. Unlike being attacked by the swan, which had been heavy enough to knock him off his feet, this felt like being pelted from all sides by feathered softballs that scratched and bit. He felt them tug at his clothing as they clawed and struck, but the heavy fabric kept them from reaching his skin. His hat was knocked off, and he felt tiny sticklike feet clawing at his face. Striking out, he fought to keep them away from his head, unsure how well the material of his face would stand up to the sharp beaks and claws.

He reached the woman and grabbed by the neck a large gull that was tearing at her scalp. Twisting its neck, he threw the gull to the ground, grabbed the woman’s arm and hauled her up off the ground. As they ran toward the door, he felt a surge of relief as he saw her take a ring of keys out of her apron pocket. She cried out and dropped the keys as a gull swooped and struck her in the face, its bill cutting a deep gash in her forehead.

With a snarl, he pounced on the keys and scooped them up, dragging her the last several feet to the door. Not knowing which key was correct, he pushed them into her hands and concentrated on fending off attacks while she unlocked the door. She opened the door and Rorschach shoved her through, slamming it shut on the maelstrom outside.

Panting, he looked the woman over. It looked like her only serious injury was the gash on her forehead. She’d been lucky enough, or had fended them off skillfully enough, to still have her eyes. He turned to look for some type of first aid supplies; gauze would do to wrap her forehead until she could get to an emergency room. As he did, there was a loud thump at the front of the store and he heard glass crack. It sounded like someone had struck the window with a baseball bat.

They both looked toward the front of the store, and he heard the woman suck in a sharp breath. Seagulls were diving into the storefront window, striking it hard enough to send long cracks shivering through the glass. As they watched, several more gulls crashed into the glass, splintering it further.

Knowing he would probably be too late, Rorschach ran toward the front window anyway, hoping to get the window grate rolled down before the glass fell. The storeowner’s wife was right behind him, evidently thinking the same thing. But before they reached the front of the store more birds hit the splintering glass and the front window disintegrated in a shower of brilliant shards. Birds poured in through the shattered window.

As they skidded to a stop, she grabbed his sleeve and pointed, yelling at him in Vietnamese. Rorschach saw that she was pointing at the back of the store, to a door behind the register. They ran for it, hands held protectively over their heads. Instead of taking the time to skirt around the counter, Rorschach simply picked her up and tossed her over, vaulting over himself right behind her. He hauled her to her feet and they shot through the door, slamming it shut behind them.

It was pitch black inside the room. He felt her move past him, searching the wall. She found the switch and a light flickered on. The small room was still hot and stifling, but at least he could see now. Outside the door, he could hear harsh bird cries and the sound of things being knocked off shelves and falling over as the birds flew madly around the store.

Mercifully, considering the tiny space, the storeowner’s wife seemed to be done screaming. Instead, she slowly sank down to sit on the floor between a couple of boxes, shaking and looking up at him. In her wide-eyed dark stare he recognized the look of someone who has just had their illusions about the world being a sane place stripped violently away.

She pointed to his coat and said something in a dull, flat voice. He assumed she was referring to either the smell or its filthy condition and shrugged, looking around for something he could use to bandage her bleeding forehead. For the second time that night (or morning, rather), he found himself wishing that Nite Owl were here. Daniel would have had kind words for the woman even though she wouldn’t have understood them, would have tried to comfort her in some way. That sort of thing wasn’t in Rorschach’s nature. The only thing he would have told her, if he could have made her understand, was that if this didn’t kill her she would probably never be afraid of anything again.

Rorschach’s bewilderment was beginning to change into a much more familiar feeling; rage. A less familiar feeling was helplessness. If the storeowner had been killed during a robbery, it would have been obvious what to do about it. Pry information out of unwilling sources as necessary, hunt the killers down and balance the scales by making an example of them. Maybe make their degenerate friends think twice about murdering innocents. But he didn’t have the first idea how to deal with something like this.

This was three times now that he’d witnessed or heard of birds attacking people. Twice now people had died, and there was no doubt in his mind that if he and the children’s chaperones hadn’t prevented it, the geese and swan would have killed the children in the park. Something, or possibly even someone, was making these creatures attack innocent people. He had no idea whether it was actually possible to train birds to do these types of things, but he was going to find out.

The woman put her hand on his arm, breaking his train of thought. He stepped back automatically from her touch, growling "What?"

She said something, gesturing at the door. Rorschach realized that it was quiet outside now.

Cautiously, he opened the door a fraction of an inch to peek through. Nothing moved outside. He opened the door and they both moved slowly out into the devastated store. Everywhere in the tiny store, things were knocked over or spilled across the floor.

He found some boxes of gauze and opened one. As he motioned the woman over to him, they both heard sirens approaching. To his surprise, she took the roll of gauze from his hand, said something that sounded like a command and pointed to the back door. When he didn’t move immediately, she shook her head and pushed him toward the door, starting to cry again as lights flashed outside.

Rorschach was gone before the first policeman arrived on the scene.

***

A half-hour later he finally reached his stifling apartment, where he guzzled down almost a half-gallon of bottled water and finished off the saltine crackers. Then he dropped onto his narrow bed, exhausted, and slept like a dead thing.


	6. Chapter 6

The heat invaded his sleep, touching his uneasy dreams with fever and a hint of delirium.

He dreamed that he was in the old movie house near his mother’s apartment. As a boy Walter had often snuck in through an unlatched rear window and crept into the theater’s empty back row to watch, fascinated, as the screen showed stories about lives and worlds so unlike his own that they might as well have been set on the moon. Stories about incorruptible heroes and easily identifiable (and always defeated) villains, families headed by wise fathers who guided and protected, and loving mothers who never made their children scream in pain or wished them dead out loud.

But the images on the screen were far darker than any he remembered seeing as a boy. Now the flickering light showed terrible things. Up on the screen, monochromatic parodies of the old films he remembered were playing; images that befitted the foaming cesspool that was now his only world. As he watched Rin Tin Tin’s jaws grind into a slender shinbone and crack it to gnaw out the marrow, nausea stirred in his throat and he looked away. Startled, he saw that there was someone else in the theater. Daniel was sitting several seats away; his head sunk down and canted to one side. Rorschach realized with a stab of annoyance that he was asleep, little snores purring from his mouth.

He wondered whether he should wake Daniel up. It was rude to sleep through a movie, but perhaps Daniel was better off sleeping through this one. (On the screen, a beautiful collie trotted up to Rin Tin Tin, wagging its plumy tail. Growling playfully, the dogs started playing tug of war with a long piece of splintered bone from which a tiny shoe dangled.)

On second thought, maybe it would be better for both of them if they left. Rorschach moved into the seat next to Daniel’s, put a hand on his shoulder and tried to shake him awake. Daniel’s head just rolled loosely from side to side as he was shaken and he continued to sleep.

A dusty, acidic aroma filled Rorschach’s nostrils and sparked an alarm in his chest. He backhanded Daniel lightly, snapping "Wake up!" Still no reaction.

Rustling overhead diverted his attention from trying to wake Daniel, and he looked up. The fitful light from the screen struck tiny sparks of light from thousands of points on the ceiling. As his eyes adjusted he realized that the light was reflecting from thousands of glittering black eyes. The sound of flapping wings rippled across the ceiling and the smell of greasy smoke mingled with the dusty acidity. Rising panic lent his blow extra force as he slapped Daniel again, harder this time, snarling "Daniel, get up! _Get up or die!_ "

He started to haul the unresponsive man up bodily from his seat, then let go in shock as a dribble of blood ran out from under one of Daniel’s closed eyelids. Daniel finally stirred and muttered in drowsy annoyance, "Rorschach? Knock it off, will you? All right, I’m up, I’m up."

Daniel moved his hands up to rub at his eyes and blood gushed out from under his fingers. Rorschach recoiled with a hoarse shout as Daniel’s eyelids opened and ragged sockets turned toward him. Blood spilled down Daniel’s face from the raw holes where his eyes had been as he reached out to grasp Rorschach’s arm, his brow creased with worry. As he tugged the struggling man toward him with a soft inexorable strength, Daniel’s voice was warm and gentle and concerned.

"Hey, what’s wrong? Come here, buddy. It’s OK."

***

Kovacs woke up yelling as he hit the floor next to his bed. He scrambled to his knees, looking around with wild eyes, disoriented. One of his neighbors was pounding on the wall, bellowing the classic New York echo.

" _Shut the fuck up, asshole!!_ "

Ignoring the noise, he dragged himself to his feet and sat down on the edge of the bed, panting. Fighting a swell of nausea, Kovacs concentrated on controlling his breathing and waited for his heart to stop hammering. This business with the birds was beginning to prey on his imagination, which was never, ever a good thing.

Just when he’d thought the city could never present him with another surprise, it had proved him wrong once again; opened up its endless reservoir of darkness and dispensed another poisoned treat in a new unfamiliar flavor.

He needed to check the newspapers and find out what, if anything, they had to say about the attack on the store. He checked his wallet and frowned. Funds were very low. He’d been so rattled yesterday evening that he’d forgotten to search the dead roof-leaper for cash. (Since Kovacs no longer held a day job, Rorschach’s only source of income had become the money he looted from criminals, something he easily justified by reasoning that it was simply a case of instant karma.) He would not be so forgetful tonight.

Kovacs was late in picking up his papers. By the time he reached the newsstand the sun was low in the sky. Blood red, it stained the hazy sky with ribbons of salmon and scarlet.

At the newsstand, the papers were full of usual information; one unpleasant piece of which was that the heat wave was expected to continue for at least the rest of the week with no relief in sight. A dozen deaths had been blamed on the heat so far and the papers reported that emergency rooms were overloaded with people suffering from heat-related illnesses.

Kovacs read the weather report, sighed and ran a hand over his face. The constant simmering heat and humidity was beginning to fray even his iron nerves. A top-knotted teenager blocked his access to the news shelves and he squashed an irritable impulse to simply pick the punk up and toss him out of the way.

The store owner’s death was in one of the local papers, but Kovacs was surprised to see it reported as an assumed robbery/murder and store vandalizing. (The owner’s name had been Nga Phan, his wife’s name was Hong.) The paper did mention that the owner’s body had been mutilated, but there were no specifics given. His lips thinned as he read, and his expression darkened.

 _Cover up? Or papers doubting the witness?_ , he wondered. Probably a cover up of some sort.

There was something in the papers about birds, though. There were two stories about flocks of birds smashing into storefronts and windows, and one report of someone being sent to the hospital as a result, although it wasn’t clear from the article whether it was due to injuries from broken glass, or from being attacked by birds.

Clearly the newspapers and the city’s officials either didn’t yet believe that something dangerous was going on, or the matter was being covered up for some reason. Regardless, something needed to be done. But this threat to his city was well out of his normal purview. Rorschach needed to find out what was happening and find a way to combat it. Or, if he wasn’t able to fight it himself, he had to find people who could and make them do so.

And the only person he could think of who could tell him whether it was feasible for someone to train flocks of birds to attack humans, or whether there was some other phenomenon that might be responsible for the bird attacks, was Daniel Dreiberg.


	7. Chapter 7

An hour later Rorschach stood in the sweltering shadows behind the wrought iron fence surrounding the little courtyard garden across the street from Daniel’s townhouse, contemplating his next move.

Now that he was here, he wasn’t sure how to proceed. It looked like Daniel wasn’t home. The brownstone’s windows were dark, and Rorschach doubted that it was because Daniel was working in the basement.

He debated whether to break in and wait for Daniel in his kitchen. Could become awkward though, if it turned out that Daniel was out on one of his rare dates and decided to bring his date inside when he returned. Most townhouses did not come equipped with wanted vigilantes as standard kitchen features.

The individual shadows in the courtyard grew slowly together and the streetlights flickered on as it became night. About twenty minutes after it got dark, a taxi pulled up to the curb in front of the brownstone and Daniel got out. Instead of a woman on his arm, he was carrying what looked like a small duffel bag. A piece of equipment that Rorschach recognized as Daniel’s spotting scope was strapped to the side of the bag.

He watched Daniel mount the steps to the front door. There were no cars in the street and no one in sight on the sidewalks. Here was an opportunity to get Daniel’s attention and make his presence known. If he put up his collar and tipped his hat down, it should hide his face well enough. He’d be able to cross the street and approach Daniel without the chance that one of his neighbors might glance out of their window and be treated to the sight of wanted vigilante Rorschach accosting that nice Mr. Dreiberg.

Rorschach popped his collar and tugged the brim of his hat down and reached out to push the courtyard gate open. Then he hesitated, hand curled around the wrought iron scrollwork of the gate. Realizing that he was about to speak to Daniel again for the first time in six years, his hand tightened around the iron bar and he froze.

A cold knot of anxiety twisted in his chest, mingling with the usual mixture of old anger and betrayal that had never really gone away. (Neither had the foundation of sorrow and grief that underlay the harsher, more acceptable emotions and kept them sharp, but he never acknowledged that part of it.) The unexpected surge of emotion stopped him in his tracks.

The memory of his last conversation with his ex-partner washed over him and kept him paralyzed as he watched Daniel mount the steps of the brownstone and go inside. Growling in frustration, he stepped back to lean against the wall of the building and pounded his fist against the harsh brick.

Rorschach rested his head against the wall, and behind his closed eyes it was October of 1977 again.

 _He snarls at Daniel, unable to help himself. "Can't believe you're letting a corrupt politician run your life, letting them neuter you like this." It's far ruder than anything he would normally say, but Daniel has pushed him beyond his limits.  
_   
_Daniel (not Nite Owl, he’s not his partner anymore) looks exasperated, angry, and a little sick as he paces the Nest, avoiding looking directly at Archie or at Rorschach._

 _“Look man, insult me all you want, I'm done. It's over. You're just too stubborn to see it. Things have been going downhill for a while now, nothing's seemed right. It's all just been going wrong and getting worse and worse."_

 _At this point Rorschach has an idea that Daniel’s not just talking about Nite Owl or the Keene Act anymore and it makes him even angrier. Daniel keeps talking, and for a moment Rorschach wants nothing more than to hit him, to knock Daniel sprawling and make him shut up._

 _"You could stop too, you know. For God's sake man, haven't we done enough? Why not make this an opportunity to do something else, maybe have a normal life? Haven’t you ever wanted that? No one knows your identity; you can do anything. If you want to stay in law enforcement, why don't you become a cop? You know, take the criminals down legally?”_

 _Rorschach didn’t think it possible but his rage notches up a bit higher, fueled by the humiliation of remembering the day when he found out as a teenager that he didn’t meet the height requirement for becoming a law enforcement officer. But this is too important. He has to swallow his fury and try to make Daniel understand why his daydreams of a normal life can’t work._

 _“You don't understand, Daniel. Not some job you can quit when you aren't having fun anymore. This is what we are. It's what we have to do, there’s no other choice. It’s what we were made to do. Think you can walk away from this, Daniel? You can't. Not without destroying yourself.”_

 _It’s the longest speech he’s made to Daniel in two years, and his heart sinks because Daniel doesn’t even realize that Rorschach is telling him goodbye._

 _There is one moment when Daniel hesitates and his eyes flicker toward Archie, and Rorschach feels an instant of hope. But Daniel’s eyes fall, and all he does is shake his head._

 _“I’m sorry, I really am. I wish you could understand. Look, why don’t we go up and have some coffee, maybe talk about this some more?”_

 _“Nothing more to talk about, Daniel.”_

 _And just like that, it’s all over. Everything they were together is done with and gone._

Rorschach leaned against the wall, unyielding brick hard against his back and ground his teeth. His fists were clenched so tight they sent sparks of pain shooting up his arms, but it was nothing compared to the pain of this old wound, a wound that had never even scabbed over, let alone begun to heal.

 

 _\--November 1977--_

 _For the first few weeks he manages well enough by himself. Rorschach has been performing regular patrols on his own more and more during the past year anyway, because Daniel can’t stomach meting out the kind of justice that the scum they fight deserve._

 _But up until now, he’s still worked the bigger cases with Daniel and in a large-scale fight his instincts still tell him that his partner is there. Now he has to keep adjusting for his partner’s absence, for the backup that isn't there anymore. The battles are closer and much more touch-and-go, but the intensity of the violence, the close proximity to death, keeps him distracted in a violent anesthesia._

 _Then he makes his first real misstep. While fighting a gang of eight and moving through them like a pocket thunderbolt, he pauses to assess while still in the open instead of with his back to a wall, treacherous years-old instinct telling him that Nite Owl is guarding his back. As he turns, a sharp blade strokes across the back of his thigh, the sensation like a white-hot wire laid across his leg._

 _The pain of it spurs a roar of rage and he whirls, grabbing his attacker's wrist and impaling him on his own knife (in his head he hears Daniel protest, but Daniel isn't here, is he? No quarter for this particular pocket of filth.) When he is done, they all lie dead in scattered puzzle pieces along the filthy alley and he pins his calling card to the leader's chest with the knife that cut him, driving it into the man's chest to the hilt._

 _His fury does not subside and he stands in the alley, trembling, fists clenching and unclenching. He looks around for more opponents to stoke his rage, willing reinforcements for the fallen gang members to appear because he's not done fighting, not by a long shot. But no one appears, and he is suddenly aware that he's alone, his wound is bleeding and is starting to hurt quite a bit. And just like that, his rage falls away and abandons him, leaving him as raw and bleeding as his leg._

 _A quick inspection confirms that his leg indeed needs suturing. Habit points him in the direction of the Owls Nest, then he snarls at himself and stops. Tonight he will be stitching and bandaging himself up._

 _Some time later he sits on a roof in the lee of a ventilation shaft, forearms resting across his knees, chin resting on his forearms. The knife wound on his leg, temporarily bandaged but not yet sutured, still burns._

 _Rorschach looks out over his city's lights (his city again, not their city) and feels its pulse, vital but uncaring. He is well aware that the city will never love him back. Which is fine, he doesn't expect it. His reward for protecting some and avenging others is simply the knowledge that he is the instrument that dispenses real justice to the city's criminals, as no one else will. Because of him, depraved and conscienceless men who would otherwise escape punishment are made to pay for what they have done and the balance is, if not squared, brought a little more back toward the true._

 _Nite Owl feels this compulsion too; Rorschach knows it. And he knows that turning his back on it will slowly destroy Daniel, for all of his bloviating about wanting a normal life._

 _But Daniel also wants to be loved. His learning what Rorschach has always known, that they will never be loved for what they do, that some even hate them for it, has broken something inside Daniel that is beyond Rorschach's capacity to fix or even understand._

 _If Nite Owl had fallen in battle, Rorschach could grieve cleanly for him, could assuage his grief by avenging his death, dedicating his victories to the memory of his fallen partner. But Nite Owl didn’t die in battle, he's been laid low by Daniel in a moment of cowardice and weakness that Rorschach never saw coming. And so his grief isn't clean and can't be purged. Instead it sinks into his bones like poisoned teeth and grips him tight in its jaws, suffocating him._

 _Tomorrow he will rise again and square his shoulders. He will go out alone now to chip away at the decay, strike at the individual monsters who infest every corner of his city and who prey on the weak and innocent. It's the way of the world and he can never really win, can never hope to stop the decay. He knows this just as the Comedian does, but unlike the Comedian he won't simply scoff and go along with the joke. Rorschach knows all too well that he can't save the murdered innocents, but he can avenge them._

 _But tonight, even Rorschach's iron will can’t force him back down into the maelstrom to continue the fight. Defeated, he returns to his lonely room and tends to his wounds._

***

Unmoving in the courtyard, Rorschach opened his eyes and stared at Daniel’s front door, breathing heavily and swallowing hard against a hot lump of something in his throat.

He couldn’t do this. Disgusted with himself and this inexplicable attack of cowardice, he berated himself savagely for this unexpected rush of weakness. Being blindsided by his anger at Daniel was something he hadn’t expected to happen. Maybe it was his debilitated condition, the constant heat of the last week eating away at his nerves.

He needed answers, needed someone who could explain what was going on and how to fight it. One thing was sure, though, he couldn’t talk to Daniel right now. If he confronted Dreiberg now something bad would happen, he was sure of it. Maybe later on this evening after he’d patrolled and burned off some of his anger, steeled himself for this a little better.

With a bitter noise of frustration he hunched his shoulders and walked down the street, away from the brownstone toward his nightly appointment with the darker places full of red possibilities, where he could find his equilibrium.

***

Dan unslung his duffel bag and placed his spotting scope on the coffee table before turning the television on to the local news channel. He sat on the couch and pulled his notebook out of his pack, leafing through it and shaking his head in disbelief.

The numbers of birds he’d observed today massing out in Jamaica Bay were beyond anything he’d ever seen. Huge flotillas of gull, terns, gannets, and cormorants floated out in the waters of the bay, almost as if they were waiting for something. He and a number of other birders had watched them gather all day, commenting among themselves in honest awe mixed with a bit of nervousness at the sheer number of birds massed out in the water and flocking overhead.

As he looked over his notes, the words “birds” and “damage” caught his attention and he looked up at the television.


	8. Chapter 8

The newscaster, a reporter named Chad Hunter (Dan wondered what his real name was--probably something like Melvin Ramsbottom) sat in front of a screen showing a smashed storefront window.

"Business at the Kings Plaza shopping center in Flatbush was disrupted for several hours today when a large flock of birds, reported to be mostly seagulls, descended on the area. The birds crashed into cars and buildings, knocking out streetlamps and store windows, creating a traffic jam lasting several hours. "

"The extent of the damage is not yet clear, but many stores suffered broken windows and damaged merchandise. An as yet undetermined number of people were injured in the resulting chaos; several were sent to the hospital, one with severe injuries."

The screen showed more stores with smashed windows and a few shots of broken car headlights and shattered streetlamps. Then the scene switched to what Dan recognized as a view of Jamaica Bay. It showed the same thing he’d seen earlier today; massive numbers of seabirds drifting on the waters of the bay. The scene changed again, showing a shot of huge flocks wheeling in the sky like clouds of drifting black and gray ash.

"According to Mr. William Stafford, an ornithologist at the American Museum of Natural History, unusually large numbers of seagulls and other ocean-going birds were driven inland during the past few days by turbulent weather patterns in the Atlantic. Mr. Stafford speculated to this reporter that the temporary overcrowding is pushing birds inland to look for food, and that the gulls became confused by reflections in store windows."

Dan smirked. Stafford was blowing some smoke up the reporter’s ass, there. Judging from what Parker had told Dan, and from what he’d seen for himself in the NOAA reports, there were no unusual 'turbulent weather patterns in the Atlantic' happening right now. Certainly nothing that would account for this. Dan supposed, though, that Stafford's quote had a much better ring to it than "Well, Chad, frankly we’re stumped. We have no freaking clue as to why tens of thousands of birds that shouldn’t be here are floating around out in the bay right now."

Shaking his head, Dan returned to his notes. It was too bad, but he wasn’t surprised, really. In fact, he expected more such incidents to occur if the overcrowding in the Bay continued, as more and more gulls and displaced pelagics got hungry and started foraging inland looking for landfills and dumpsters where they might find food.

***

The first part of Rorschach’s patrol unfolded in a comfortingly normal manner.

Within the space of a few hours he’d broken a purse-snatcher’s arms and tossed his unconscious body into a dumpster, thoroughly spoiled the ambience of two minor drug deals, and foiled a mugging simply by appearing at the mouth of an alleyway and clearing his throat. Not much in the way of real exercise, but the slack-jawed horror in the muggers’ expressions as they spotted Rorschach (just before they ran in terror) had been satisfying. Unfortunately it didn’t happen in a blind alley, so the thieves had gotten away. He let them go; Rorschach wasn’t going to be tolled into another long grueling pursuit in this heat. Last night had taught him that lesson.

He looked around, then quickly raised the bottom of his mask enough to allow himself a swig from the plastic canteen tucked into one of his trench coat pockets. Another lesson from last night; he wasn't taking any chances with dehydration.

As his patrol progressed, he found that some of his inner turmoil about the prospect of talking to Daniel had subsided. He just had to keep it on a business level and treat Dreiberg as another source, albeit one he wouldn’t need to break the fingers of in order to get information. _Well, probably not_ , he thought, unconsciously cracking his knuckles. _We’ll see how the conversation progresses_.

Six years was a long time. There was no telling how much Daniel might have changed or eroded inwardly, his character weakened and softened to mirror his outward changes. He didn’t like to think that Daniel might have deteriorated so much that he’d refuse to help his former partner by providing simple information, but after so much time anything was possible.

 

As he continued his beat, prowling familiar side streets and alleys, Rorschach found himself looking up far more than he usually did. Part of him expected to see flying silhouettes circling the rooftops or even arrowing down toward him out of the sky, as if the birds (or whoever was commanding them) could somehow sense that he was looking for a way to stop them.

Then he realized that he was worrying for nothing. As little as he knew about birds, one thing he did know was that he'd never seen seagulls, geese, pigeons, or any other type of bird flying around in the middle of the night in the city. Nighttime was when they slept. Relaxing a bit, he moved along more briskly.

On the next block he spotted a group of five Knot Tops who looked like they were on a mission and changed course to shadow them. As they turned into an alley, he decided that it would be more efficient to tail them from a high vantage point. Rorschach ducked down the next alley and quickly climbed the fire escape to the roof. Crossing to the other side of the roof, he spotted his prey as they turned the corner of the next street.

Jumping lightly from one roof to another, he followed the Knot Tops as they cut through several alleys and down another side street. As they neared a block that contained several abandoned buildings, Rorschach smiled in grim satisfaction; his instincts had been right. This area was a favorite meeting spot for drug deals and other gang business. It was run-down, mostly uninhabited, and the police rarely patrolled here.

Soon he was crouched at the top of a rusty and dilapidated fire escape, watching the five men he'd followed meet with four other Knot Tops in a small trash-choked courtyard between three abandoned buildings. Some money and what he assumed were bags of drugs changed hands. After that, both groups produced a collection of wallets, which they proceeded to go through at their leisure. They seemed completely at ease, leaning against crates and old bins, talking and laughing occasionally as they pored over their evening's take.

Nine against one were difficult odds but not impossible, and it was just the type of all-encompassing bout of violence that Rorschach needed to get his mind completely off Daniel for a while. If he could move through them quickly and take down as many as possible before they got organized, he should be able to pull it off.

Taking a few of them out before he reached the ground, though, would be ideal. Rorschach debated whether the most effective approach would be to fire his grappling gun directly into the group, or if he should take an example from last night's opponent and find a large chunk of roof debris to use as a missile.

Something noiselessly brushed his shoulder. It felt like a piece of cloth whipping past his head and he shot to his feet with a gasp, heart hammering. Shocked that whoever it was had managed to catch him completely unaware, he whirled to face his assailant, half-expecting the next sensation to be a knife sliding between his ribs.

As he turned, a brief flash of something brown and white sailed through the air past his head. He shied away from it and his back struck the fire escape railing, hard. A snap and a rusty metallic screech sent a bright spike of adrenaline spearing through his chest and he flailed uselessly for purchase as the corroded railing broke and he plunged backward off the fire escape.

It was a far less graceful and intimidating entrance than he'd planned.

A pile of wooden pallets and softer debris broke his three-story fall somewhat, but it was still a hard landing that left him stunned long enough for the gang members to get over their initial shock and realize what had just happened.

" _Holy shit, it’s the Rorschach! Get him!_ "

Darkness eroded the edges of his awareness; his consciousness faded to charcoal gray and the noise of their shouts slipped into muddy nonsense. He vaguely felt hard hands grab at his legs and pull him along, fingers digging cruelly into his calves and thighs. As he was hauled out of the debris pile, his coat rucked up underneath him and he felt splinters dig into his back as he was dragged across the broken pallets.

Things came back into focus. As boots slammed into his sides and legs Rorschach could hear one of his attackers chanting a continuous stream of " _Get him, get him, get him, get him!"_

Fully aware now, he tried to roll, to get his legs under him, but there were too many pairs of hands clutching at him, too many blows coming from all sides. He struggled and raged and was overwhelmed anyway. Kneeling on his arms and legs, two to a limb, they pinned him to the ground. The ninth man stood up, panting, and looked down at Rorschach as the vigilante strained uselessly against his captors.

He was tall and lean, older than the others, with grizzled iron-gray hair swept up into the ubiquitous chomage knot. With an air of command that told Rorschach this one was their leader, he said, "Hold that little peckerhead still." He grinned down at Rorschach. "Looks like my birthday came early this year. So what are we going to do with you, spooky boy?"

One of the men pinning Rorschach's left leg grimaced. "God, he fucking _reeks,_ Jay. Just hurry up and kill him, man."

A tigerish grin broke out on Jay's weathered face and he withdrew a large hunting knife from a sheath on his belt. He knelt on the pinned man’s stomach, angling one knee into Rorschach’s groin and putting most of his weight on it, producing a strangled " _kkchhk_ " and even more frantic but useless thrashing from their prize. With a flourish, he cut the belt tying the trench coat closed, tore the coat open and dipped the knife inside, all to the enthusiastic cheers and whoops of his friends.

He worked the knife through the intervening grimy layers; jacket, vest, and yellowed dress shirt, ripping them open, then stroked the blade experimentally across Rorschach’s chest. When the knife came back bloody, a tiny expression of relief flickered across his angular face. The expression was oddly mirrored on the other men’s faces when they saw the blood.

The myths surrounding Rorschach were powerful and although they would never have admitted it, all of them had superstitiously half-expected this creature that they’d captured only through a stroke of luck to bleed black ink or some sort of unearthly ichor, or nothing at all. The evidence that this was, indeed, something human that could be cut and made to bleed renewed their courage. Jay laughed down into the dizzily shifting ink patterns as he felt Rorschach writhe impotently underneath him.

"I’m going to open you up like a fucking Christmas present. Then I’m going to take that stupid sock off your head and wipe my ass with it, what do you think of that, baby?"

He never got a chance, though, to find out what Rorschach thought about that.

Rorschach saw another flash of brown and white, like the one that had startled him off of the roof, fall silently through the air and onto the face of the man kneeling on him. Jay screamed and dropped the hunting knife, clutching at his face where the thing had attached itself. Something warm and liquid spattered across Rorschach’s face and neck as the knife fell, handle-first, and bounced harmlessly off his chest.

Jay threw himself back, slamming into the two men holding Rorschach’s right leg and knocking them over. As their grips loosened and he felt his leg slip free, Rorschach growled in triumph. He brought his freed leg up and mule-kicked one of the men holding his left leg squarely in the face, slamming him into the man in back of him and tearing both of their holds loose.

His legs now free, Rorschach swung himself into a reverse sit-up, using the gripping hands that still anchored his arms as leverage, and gave one of the men holding his arms a savage boot to the jaw. As he wrestled himself free of the remaining hands on him, he heard Jay’s screams hit a higher, more frantic pitch.

Leaping to his feet, Rorschach took advantage of whatever was distracting his captors to swiftly render the Knot Tops within his immediate reach hors de combat, two with broken kneecaps, one with a probable skull fracture. Then he turned to get a good look at what was attacking the gang's leader.

When Rorschach realized what was tearing at the man’s face, the first thing that went through his mind was disappointment, because he was obviously still dreaming. Or worse, still unconscious; and while he was being mauled and stomped to death by the gang, his mind had conjured up a fantasy of being rescued by an avatar of his old partner. Because there was no chance that he was actually watching a huge owl rip his attacker’s face to shreds.

As he watched the giant raptor sink its talons deep into the man’s cheek and tear part of it free, Rorschach realized that the eye above it was gone, only a bloody carved-out socket left behind. The gutted face of the storeowner flashed in his mind, followed by a briefer but even more unnerving flash of Daniel’s face, warm eyes replaced by bleeding dark pits. He involuntarily recoiled, lips drawing back from his gritted teeth. One of the Knot Tops to his right screamed and began howling frantic pleas.

"Oh _fuck_ , get it off, get it off, _help me_ , what the fuck oh _fuck!_ ,"

Rorschach turned and saw that a different owl had landed on the other man’s neck and was tearing at him as he flailed and screamed. Rorschach looked up and crouched instinctively, staring wide-eyed. _Dreaming, have to be,_ he thought.

Silent as falling ash, more owls were dropping out of the sky, golden eyes bright and wide, wicked talons extended from tufted feet.

Something soft struck the back of his head and his neck and shoulder were gripped in a vise, spikes of fire stabbing into them. The pain was too real to be a fantasy and Rorschach realized that as unbelievable as it was, this was actually happening.

The crushing grip on his shoulder released, shifted, then closed again and sank fresh lines of molten pain into a different part of his shoulder. As the grip on his neck tightened agonizingly, he felt claws punch into his neck and realized that these night birds had not come to his rescue, but instead had simply come to add him along with the others to their feast.

He reached behind him, gloved fingers sliding through feathers and over sinewy muscle under tight skin. As he groped for purchase on the bird’s flapping wing, the owl’s grip shifted, dizzyingly strong and fast, from his shoulder to his wrist. Rorschach yelled as he felt talons punch through fabric and leather, sinking into his forearm and the heel of his palm. The owl's hooked beak slashed at his arm, cutting a deep red furrow into it.

Vision obscured by wings buffeting his head as the owl fought wildly to keep its balance, he heard screams and curses all around him as the Knot Tops were savaged by the nocturnal raptors.

Rorschach stumbled toward the nearest wall and threw himself against it back first, trying to dislodge the demon on his neck. It hissed and launched itself off of him to avoid being crushed against the wall. As it did, its wing slipped out of his grip, leaving behind several long barred feathers in his clutching hand. For an instant fierce golden eyes surrounded by rufous facial discs and the illusion of scowling black brows glared at him, then the owl’s powerful wings were propelling it away, up into the air.

As the other owls began rising into the air to follow, the gang members who could still stand started running, dragging their semiconscious companions and partially blinded leader along with them. Spurring them along was the notion, unspoken, but present in all of their minds, that the owls had somehow appeared to assist Rorschach. (No one had noticed that Rorschach was also under attack.)

Although it was common knowledge among the New York gangs that Nite Owl had either retired or been killed years ago, the Terror of the Underworld was still inextricably associated with owls, and it was not much of a leap for them to believe that he’d somehow summoned them to his aid.

One owl lingered long enough to swoop down on a straggling Knot Top and deliver a parting blow, talons cutting several deep gashes in the back of the man's head. Then it wheeled and rose, wings pumping, to follow its companions up into the dark air. They were gone in moments, as eerily silent as they had come, not a flutter or rustle of pinion betraying their departure.

Furious, Rorschach started after the fleeing Knot Tops, meaning to let none of them get away. As he ran, he touched the back of his neck to check how badly he was bleeding; he'd felt those claws go deep. He brought his hand around to look at it and stopped dead in his tracks with a harsh noise of alarm. Mingled with the blood on his hands were streaks of white threaded with black.

 _My face!_

His face was damaged. All thoughts of retribution for indignities suffered vanished in a suffocating rush of fear.

The grappling gun hauled him safely up past the sagging and fractured fire escape back to the rooftop. Crouched beside the remains of an old utility shed, he tugged off his face and surveyed the damage. Pearly fluid banded with streaks of black oozed from two punctures near the edge of the mask.

Fumbling in haste, he dug through his pockets until he found a book of matches. Working feverishly, he carefully pinched the edges of the punctured latex together with trembling fingers and lit match after match, using the flames to melt the sundered edges together and keep any more of his face's essence from bleeding out.

At last, he could find no fresh leaks from the damaged material, and he relaxed a bit, exhaling a long shaky breath. Now that the adrenaline rush was winding down, he could feel his many injuries starting to make themselves known. Automatically clamping down on the pain, he took a careful inventory of himself.

It could be worse. Major bruising, a lot of minor cuts and scrapes, some pulled muscles. He was reasonably sure that he had a few cracked ribs, but aside from that he couldn’t find any other broken bones. The cut on his chest should be sutured, as well as the gash in his forearm where the owl had torn him with its beak. The injuries on his neck and shoulders left behind by the owl’s talons concerned him, though. The neck wound in particular was bleeding more than he was comfortable with and he kept his hand pressed to it, hoping to stanch the blood flow.

Growling, he surveyed his damaged uniform. The slashes in his clothing upset him more than the slice across his chest. It was going to require some major work to repair the huge rents in his jacket, vest, and shirt. And his face was going to need more refined work to make sure that his emergency repairs held and the breaches were securely sealed.

It was time. Resigned, he stood up and started toward the one place he knew where he could find help, first aid, and most importantly, answers.


	9. Chapter 9

The walk down the tunnel to the Nest seemed longer than he remembered. The air in the passage was less warm than it was outside, but still humid. As he walked, Rorschach's footfalls echoed strangely down the dank empty passageway and his journey started to feel a little unreal.

It was easy to imagine that the last six years had never happened and that he was walking down the tunnel to rendezvous with Nite Owl for the night's patrol. A scrape along the wall where Archie had struck it while piloted by a semiconscious Daniel (barely assisted by a frantic Rorschach) after a devastating run-in with the Underboss' troops looked fresh, as if it could have happened last week.

He automatically placed his steps to avoid triggering the approach alarms. Even after all this time, he still remembered well where they were. (He wondered if Daniel even bothered with arming them anymore.)

Archie’s cobwebbed, canvas draped form and the shrouded workbenches stood lonely in the Nest, sad reminders that Daniel had abandoned them all. Drifts of thick ashy dust covered every surface. Daniel evidently did not come downstairs to visit his abandoned tools or airship often.

The heavy dust on and in front of the glass cabinet where Nite Owl’s uniform hung was disturbed, though. Despite the pangs he felt at seeing his ex-partner’s uniform and armor hanging empty and forgotten, he was drawn to the cabinet, wanting to investigate the marks in the dust. He stopped, surprised, when he got a good look at them.

Footprints, left by bare feet, were thick in front of the uniform cabinet. Kneeling, Rorschach studied the prints, wondering what in the world they could signify. The prints belonged to someone with feet large enough to be Daniel’s, but why in the world Daniel would be coming down into his basement to stand barefoot in front of his old uniform was beyond him.

If not Daniel's, though, then whose prints were they? The thought that some stranger had discovered the tunnels and the Nest and was visiting it to stare at Nite Owl's suit was profoundly disturbing. Whoever it was had been there many times, to judge from the number of footprints and the way they overlapped.

His eyes narrowed as he carefully examined a particularly clear print. Rorschach made a soft noise as he focused on a thick crease marking the edge of one heel print. He clearly remembered the fight where an amphetamine-fast katiehead had swung a machete at Nite Owl and buried it in his boot heel. The deep cut had required stiches and had kept Daniel off that foot for weeks, unable to patrol. There was no mistake; these footprints were Daniel’s.

Rorschach stood up and examined the front of the glass cabinet. There were smears in the dust, and several hand prints which he felt sure also belonged to Daniel. He looked at Archie again and this time he saw it; dusty imprints of hands around the lower edges of the airship’s windows. Large hands, Daniel-sized hands.

Perhaps Daniel’s conscience was bothering him even more than Rorschach had imagined. _Or perhaps he sleepwalks and doesn’t even know that he’s doing it_ , his mind supplied. It would explain the bare feet.

The thought that Daniel’s subconscious might be dragging him down here in his dreams to face the silent accusation of Nite Owl’s empty uniform, compelling him to stare at it night after night was somehow not as satisfying a thought as it should have been. Instead, it made him feel depressed.

He squared his sore shoulders and mounted the basement stairs to the house. After a final moment of hesitation, he opened the door and stepped out through the pantry, into the hallway behind Daniel’s kitchen.

The first thing that struck him was the cool, _dry_ air. Air conditioning, of course. He’d forgotten. The sudden absence of the suffocating heat and humidity that had plagued him for weeks was such intense relief that it made him a little dizzy. Or perhaps it was just a slight oxygen overload that made him feel lightheaded as he took the first deep, comfortable breaths he’d taken in more than a week.

The kitchen light was on. Rorschach steeled himself, then stepped through the doorway into the kitchen.

Daniel was sitting at the kitchen table surrounded by notebooks and open books, head pillowed on crossed arms, snoring lightly. Rorschach debated whether he should wake Daniel up or wait, but the matter was taken out of his hands before he could decide. Daniel stirred and started to lift his head, one hand coming up to adjust his skewed glasses. Rorschach took a deep breath and said, "Hello, Daniel."

***

The smell of blood brought Dan surging up out of sleep, the scent a sharp slap to his unconscious.

Old blood, with the foul sick-sweet edge of decay, overlaid with the sharper coppery tang of fresh blood. Both scents were familiar and instantly fueled the engine of memory, bringing him to full alert with two thoughts: _old blood, decay; bad crime scene or body dump_ , and _fresh blood; someone’s hurt and it’s not me._ Then he heard the voice that had haunted his thoughts and dreams for six years. Low and grating, barely above a whisper, full of rusty nails and dirt, it said, " _Hello, Daniel._ "

Dan opened his eyes and gasped. He jerked his head up sharply, arms tensing as he gripped the edge of the table. What he saw sent a wave of dread rolling through his entire body, chilling his blood to ice water.

 _Of course he came here, who else was Rorschach going to haunt?_

The apparition that stood before him now was the sum of every fear he’d had about and for his ex-partner over the past six years.

Rorschach stood just inside the kitchen doorway, the coppery smell of fresh and ancient blood rolling off him. Dan stared, his eyes wide and shocked. Yesterday must have been some type of prophetic flash, he thought, because his worst fear from then had been realized; this was why there had been no sightings of his partner for almost two months. Rorschach had finally had an encounter that he hadn't survived.

It looked like someone, or more likely a gang, had cut him to ribbons. The front of his uniform was a bloody ruin. Streaks and splashes of blood were spread across his shoulders and arms, had soaked through his scarf, dappling it with large patches of red.

Dan prayed that it had at least been fast, that it had been a lucky knife thrust during a fight that had finally gotten past Rorschach’s defenses to touch and still the indomitable heart. The idea that he might have been tortured first, that a gang had captured him and taken their time cutting him was more than Dan could bear to face.

"Oh God. I'm so sorry." Tears blurred his eyes. It was too late now to help his old friend, except to bear witness for him as the only person who would care about his death. Although a part of him never wanted to know, he couldn't keep from asking. "I---I should have...How did it happen?"

His ex-partner's apparition took a step forward then stopped, head cocked to one side. Inkspots flowed and congregated into a particular pattern that, along with the angle of his head translated in Dan's memory as Rorschach's _"What the hell, Daniel?"_ combination.

The interrogatory gesture wrenched Dan's heart with its familiarity while at the same time confusing him, because why was Rorschach's accusing spirit puzzled by his question? Didn’t he think that Dan would care enough to want to find out what happened and somehow track down those responsible?

The shifting mask regarded him in silence for a few more moments, then the head jerked in annoyance and its wearer exhaled sharply and snapped an exasperated, "Not a _ghost_ , Daniel!"

It was the aggravated huff accompanying the statement that did it. Dan's moment of superstitious dread collapsed, leaving him enervated and feeling more than a little foolish.

Then he realized that he was still gaping like a landed fish at Rorschach, who had evidently decided to walk back into Dan’s life as abruptly as he’d stepped out of it six years ago. His ex-partner, who now stood in front of him, very much alive.

Rorschach stepped forward, fists clenched, impatience vibrating in every line of his stance and growled, "Need to talk to you."

Dan shook himself. He slowly rose to his feet and stood, silently staring at the other man. The moment stretched out and he continued to stare at Rorschach, not saying a word. During the last six years he'd thought of a million things that he wanted to say to his ex-partner if he ever showed back up, and right now not a single one of them came to mind.

A bit of uncertainty crept into Rorschach’s stance and he shifted his position from one foot to the other.

"Need to talk to you, Daniel," he repeated. Then, in a lower voice, he added, "Need your help."

At that, Dan took a deep, shuddering breath. _He’s alive. And he's come to you for help. Say something, you idiot._

In that instant, every angry thing that he’d been storing up for years to say ever since his former partner had vanished from Dan’s life dissipated in a wave of sheer relief and joy.

Without thinking, as naturally as taking a breath, Dan crossed the distance between them in two strides and pulled the other man into a tight embrace.


	10. Chapter 10

For a few wonderful relief-drenched moments, Dan forgot everything else and just held onto his ex-partner, sending up a silent _thank you_. And for the briefest of moments, so short-lived that Dan was later unsure it had actually happened, he felt Rorschach accept the embrace, his head falling lightly against Dan's shoulder.

As his grip tightened and the force of his hug lifted Rorschach off the ground, the smaller man stiffened in his arms and made a tiny grunt of pain as his feet left the floor. At the soft " _Ghnn_ ", Dan’s rational brain switched back on and he realized that he was holding an injured (possibly severely injured) man way too tightly. Appalled at himself, he immediately released Rorschach, babbling an apology.

"Oh God, you’re hurt, I’m sorry, I just…" He wasn’t sure what to say as he looked into the frenetically shifting patches of ink over Rorschach’s eyes. "I--I thought you were dead. I’m sorry." Dan felt embarrassment stain his cheeks red. He glanced down at himself and saw that his gray t-shirt was rusty with smeared patches of drying blood.

Rorschach staggered a bit and then caught himself. There was a slight tremor in his voice as he spoke. "Apology unnecessary, Daniel."

Shaking his head and thinking that he was lucky Rorschach hadn't decked him, Dan pulled out a chair from the kitchen table. "Here, sit down, sit down."

Holding himself carefully, Rorschach walked past Dan and sat down at the kitchen table. " _Hrhn_. Should know better, Daniel. No intention of dying yet. Too much left to do."

Dan just nodded and forced a weak smile. "Yeah, what was I thinking? I'll go get the first aid kit."

As Dan hurried down the hall to the bathroom, the foremost of the many thoughts spinning in his head was _God, he’s gotten so light._

Not light in a frail way; when he hugged him Dan had felt rock-hard muscle rolling under the filthy layers of cloth. But back when they were partners, he’d picked up and carried Rorschach more than once when the man was unconscious or too badly hurt to walk and Dan remembered very well _exactly_ what it felt like to lift his partner's weight. In that brief instant when he’d lifted him up just now he could tell that Rorschach had lost at least fifteen, possibly even twenty pounds from a frame that had never had much spare flesh on it to begin with.

And oh, dear _God_ , he stank. He smelled like insanity; an overwhelming reek of old and fresh blood, rancid sweat, and adrenaline with a bitter dark undertone of something unidentifiable but terrifying. Some of it was no doubt from the filthy clothes, but it was still obvious that Rorschach hadn't bathed in weeks; possibly even months. And Dan was positive that the man wouldn't be able to recall the last time his clothes had been washed if his life depended on it.

As he searched the back of the bathroom closet for the old first aid/trauma kit, Dan wondered whether at this point Rorschach was homeless and reduced to sleeping in abandoned buildings or subway tunnel offshoots, thus having no way to wash or do laundry. It was hard to imagine anyone, even Rorschach, voluntarily abstaining from washing in this heat. It was also hard to imagine him holding down a job or keeping an apartment in his current state.

It was probably a doomed idea, but Dan resolved to do his best, after he'd patched up Rorschach's injuries, to get him to at least take a shower before he left. Just the thought of walking around coated in layers of stale sweat from the last week's simmering heat without being able to wash any of it off made Dan's skin crawl, and he shuddered in sympathy. Getting Rorschach to launder his clothes was probably a forlorn dream, but he promised himself that he'd at least try.

Pondering how he could get at least one good meal into his ex-partner before he disappeared again, Dan shook his head at himself. He wondered why he felt so driven to pack as much supportive care as possible into the almost certainly brief window of time in which Rorschach would be here. Inexplicable, really. It wasn't as if the man would appreciate it; Dan wasn't that self-delusional. And he knew it would just be a drop in the bucket but still, it was at least _something_ that he could do to help his old partner, however meaningless it might be in the long run.

Dan wondered what it was that Rorschach wanted to talk to him about, or whether it was just an excuse to cover the fact that Rorschach needed help stitching himself up this time. If that was the case, Dan was kind of dreading seeing what other injuries Rorschach was hiding underneath the filthy coat and jacket. _Can't believe he's still wearing all of his layers in this heat. Wait, what am I thinking? Of course I can believe it, it's Rorschach._

When he returned to the kitchen with the medical kit, Rorschach was sitting exactly where he'd left him, forearms resting on the table. Dan placed the kit bag on the table and gestured toward the other man's torn clothing. "Before we talk about anything, let's get you patched up. Let me have a look."

He made as if to take hold of Rorschach's scarf and unwind it, but faltered and stopped short of touching it when the other man visibly stiffened up and leaned away. Chagrined, Dan stepped back feeling like he'd been slapped.

"Okay…why don't _you_ take your scarf and jacket and other stuff off. I'll start some coffee. Don't know about you, but I could sure use some." What Dan could really use was a few fingers of Glenlivet over ice with a splash of soda, but that was probably a bad idea. Especially since he was probably going to be suturing one or more knife wounds shortly. So, coffee it was.

He started a pot perking, glancing sidelong as he did to watch Rorschach slowly peel off his blood-soaked scarf. Moving slowly, almost as if he were drugged, Rorschach shrugged out of the torn trench coat and then peeled off his jacket, vest and shirt, dropping them to the floor. Finally a filthy wifebeater undershirt, thin with wear, joined the pile and he sat shirtless and silent at the table. Face grim, Dan started to inspect his ex-partner's injuries.

What appalled him most wasn't the bloody gash across Rorschach's chest or the wounds on his neck and arm. He'd seen worse, by far. But now that he had a good view of Rorschach's upper body he was shocked at the network of unfamiliar scars, healed and healing, and at how the ropy muscles of his arms and back stood out, carved in stark relief under his unhealthy-looking grimy skin.

It felt to Dan like he’d been distilled down to just bone and sinew; something made in his old friend’s likeness, carved out of ivory and bound in leather. For a moment Dan thought about stories of changelings, and he shivered. Then he shuddered again when he realized that the notion of this being some eldritch imitation of Rorschach sitting in his kitchen was almost preferable to the idea that this hard, feral, stinking creature was actually his old partner. Keeping his voice as neutral as possible, he said, "My God, Rorschach, what happened to you?"

Dan wasn’t really asking about his injuries, but Rorschach evidently took it as such. "Had run-in with some Knot Tops."

Dan silently studied Rorschach's injuries, one hand held lightly over his mouth, his expression darkening. In addition to the long shallow gash that neatly transversed his chest, the other man's torso was mottled with abrasions and bruises. Several of the larger bruises showed the clear outline of boot soles. Rorschach had obviously been the recent recipient of a serious stomping from multiple assailants.

Dan closely examined one of the angry red bruises over Rorschach's ribs. He pressed on it lightly and noted the slight flinch and indrawn breath that resulted. "I'm going to have to tape you up. Pretty sure you've got at least one cracked rib."

Rorschach nodded, grunting. "Agreed".

Dan looked at him and figured what the hell. "I know I'm spitting into the wind here, but you really should get this looked at in a hospital. You know, get your ribs x-rayed to make sure there aren't any fragments floating around in there."

Rorschach snorted, and Dan felt a pang at the familiarity of it. "Good to know your sense of humor's still intact, Daniel."

Dan half-smiled in spite of himself, shaking his head at his ex-partner. "Good to know some things never change. Looks like it must have been some run-in you had. How many were there?"

Rorschach shrugged. "Nine. Captured temporarily, sustained some damage before breaking loose."

 _Nine of them. By himself. God._ Dan said nothing, moving behind Rorschach so that the other man couldn't see his face. He winced when he noticed several wooden shards lodged under the skin of Rorschach's lower back, raising distinct ridges underneath the abraded skin.

"Ouch. You've got some serious splinters run into your back, man. I should get those out before you lean back against something and drive them in further. How'd that happen, anyway?"

"Fell off roof. Landed on debris, wood pallets. Dragged over them."

Rorschach went on to describe the fire escape breaking, his fall off the roof and being attacked and pinned down by the gang. As he listened to Rorschach's flat, uninflected voice Dan mused that you'd never be able to tell that the man had been brutally beaten and narrowly escaped being tortured to death only a few hours ago. The only time he'd seemed unsettled so far was after being hugged by Dan.

His ex-partner's story dovetailed so closely with the scenario Dan had envisioned earlier when he'd thought Rorschach an apparition that it was difficult to keep from showing his dismay as he listened. Retrieving a pair of needle-nosed pliers from a kitchen drawer, Dan wondered how Rorschach had broken free. From his description so far it sounded like they'd had him securely held down.

Before stooping to extract the splintered wood from his ex-partner's back, Dan examined the odd puncture wounds on Rorschach's neck and shoulder. From the amount of drying blood around them, it looked like they'd bled fairly freely when inflicted. At this point, though, there was only a tiny bit of blood seeping out.

There was a similar grouping of wounds next to a short gash on Rorschach's right forearm. The punctures and the surrounding pattern of bruising looked weirdly familiar to Dan but he couldn't place where he'd seen injuries like that before. Tentative, he touched the area around the neck wounds, doing his best to ignore the way Rorschach tensed up when Dan's fingertips ran over the bruised skin around the punctures.

"These look pretty deep. What, did one of the guys have a meat fork or something?"

Rorschach drummed his fingers on the table briefly, then said, "Attacked by something else while fighting Knot Tops."

For the first time in the conversation, Dan detected unease in the other man's voice. Rorschach hesitated, then leaned down and picked up his trench coat. After rummaging in its pockets, he retrieved two large crumpled, bedraggled feathers and handed them to Dan. Mottled gray, brown and cream with black barring, their soft edges were fringed in a way that was very familiar to Dan.


	11. Chapter 11

Suddenly Dan was able to place where he'd seen wounds like those on Rorschach's neck and arm before; long, narrow curved bruises, each one terminating in a puncture wound. He had seen injuries like that while doing fieldwork for the Institute of Field Ornithology with a group of other students. They'd been helping with a breeding census of birds at Moosehorn up in Maine and Parker had unwittingly gotten too close to a Great Horned Owl's nest with chicks. The mother owl had sailed in and latched onto him, nailing him in the shoulder and face. The marks she'd left on Parker's shoulder looked just like the marks on Dan's ex-partner.

Combined with the torn-out primary feathers, the distinctive wounds on Rorschach's neck, wrist, and hand clinched it; as bizarre as it was, it seemed that Rorschach had been attacked by a Great Horned Owl. Dan studied the crumpled feathers, noticing that they were gummed here and there with splotches of drying blood.

"You were attacked by an owl?" Fascinated, he ran a fingertip along one of the purpling bruise tracks, lifting his hand and muttering "Sorry," when Rorschach shifted uncomfortably in the chair. Rorschach nodded.

"Yes. Very large owl."

"Huh." Dan wet a washcloth with antiseptic and started to clean up the neck wounds. He noticed that Rorschach's ear on that side was seriously abraded, too. Scored and swollen, it looked like someone might have tried to bite the lower part of it off. He shook his head, trying to reconcile the combination of human and owl-inflicted injuries on his ex-partner's body as he gently cleaned up the dried blood encrusting the injured ear. "So did one of the K-Tops have a pet owl?"

Rorschach picked up the bottle of antiseptic and turned it around in his hands several times before answering. "No. Wild owl. More than one, Knot Tops attacked as well. Owl landed on leader, tore his face, took his eye. Gave me chance to get loose."

"Where were you when this happened?"

"Block of condemned buildings on northwest side of old patrol area. Popular spot for drug dealers, gang meetings."

"Yeah, I remember it." Dan frowned, thinking about the area as he swabbed delicately at the back of Rorschach's neck. It was weird, but feasible that a pair of Great Horneds might have set up shop in one of those old condemned buildings. If the area was still the way Dan remembered it, there wasn't much human traffic through there except for gangs and the occasional adventurous kids.

_Late in the year for a pair to be raising chicks, but if they lost their first clutch and were raising a second one...it'd explain why the parents were being so protective of the area. I should take a trip over there and find out where they're nesting, make sure they're okay. I owe them for saving his life, even if they did scar him up a little._

Done cleaning the neck wounds, Dan turned his attention back to the bits of wooden pallet lodged in Rorschach's back. In response to Dan's light pressure between his shoulder blades and his murmured, "Okay, lean forward," Rorschach leaned over the table and pillowed his head on his crossed arms.

Dan reflected that it was a little scary how easily he'd fallen back into the routine of matter-of-factly patching up his partner (ex-partner). It was stupid of Dan to be doing this, the man really needed to go to a hospital.

Trying to be as careful as possible, Dan took the needle-nosed pliers and started coaxing the large splinters out of Rorschach's back. Although he was being as gentle as he could be, he knew it had to hurt. Rorschach, of course, gave no sign, staying perfectly still as he worked. As Dan painstakingly teased another wooden shard out from under tight-stretched grimy skin he said, "You know, you got off lightly. I know you probably don't feel that way, but a Great Horned can do a lot of damage. Their beaks are sharp, but the feet are the really dangerous part. They kill prey by grabbing it with both feet and punching those long sharp claws in, getting a good grip."

One of the shards snagged and hung up while being slid out from under the other man's bruised skin. Rorschach shifted and grunted as Dan had to apply extra force to dislodge the splinter, tearing the skin a little. "Sorry, that one got stuck. Anyway, a Great Horned will hang on and squeeze until their prey suffocates or bleeds to death. If that claw had gone in half an inch that way," Dan lightly tapped a spot near the deepest neck wound, "it would have punctured your carotid." He paused, and then said quietly, "You'd have probably bled out long before you got here."

"Didn’t know they were so strong."

"A Great Horned Owl’s grip strength is around 500 psi. That's equal to the bite of an attack dog." Oddly, Rorschach shuddered at that, turning his face sideways on his crossed arms. Puzzled, Dan studied his ex-partner's half-profile closely, wondering at the way the ink moved frenetically over the hidden cheekbones and jaw.

"You and the Knot Tops must have gotten too close to their nest. They've probably staked out a territory in one of those abandoned buildings."

Done with removing the splinters, Dan ran the antiseptic-soaked washcloth over the abraded areas on Rorschach's back, grimacing to himself as he saw the cloth turn blackish-gray with the layers of grime that were coming off. His nose seemed to be adjusting a bit, mercifully; the unwashed stench of Rorschach's body wasn't making him feel slightly ill anymore.

He loaded a fresh washcloth with the antiseptic solution and started cleaning up the gash on his ex-partner's forearm. "All right, I'll do your arm first, then I'll stitch up that gash on your chest."

As Dan threaded a suture needle, Rorschach cleared his throat and spoke. There was an odd edge to his voice as he said. " _Hrmm_. Not a pair of owls, Daniel. More than that."

Confused, Dan straightened up and looked at his ex-partner. "More?"

Rorschach nodded. "Ten, maybe more than that. All attacked. Removed leader's eye, drove Knot Tops off."

Dan's eyes widened as he took in this new bit of anomalous information. A pair of owls nesting in an inner-city abandoned building was unusual but believable. But owls didn't flock, and the idea of a group of owls attacking in an organized manner like Rorschach was describing just didn't make sense. "Are you sure about how many there were? A couple of pissed off Great Horneds can seem like a dozen when they're going after you."

"Very sure. Saw the others fly down out of the sky after first two attacked."

"Uh..." A sense of sharp unease made Dan's skin start to prickle.

"Daniel. What I needed to talk to you about. Look at this." Rorschach leaned down to pick up his trench coat and retrieved a couple of folded-up newspaper articles from it, which he tossed on the table in front of Dan. "Something very strange going on. Need your help with finding out who's behind it, how to combat it. Your area of expertise, not mine."

Now both confused and uneasy, Dan put the needle down and obediently picked up the clippings.

The first article was about a grocery store robbery and the murder of the store's owner, a Vietnamese immigrant. It mentioned that the owner was mutilated and the store vandalized. Dan frowned, wondering if this was what Rorschach had come to him about and why; what connection Rorschach might have with the murdered man. And what kind of help Rorschach expected from Dan, if this was the case.

The other article was about an incident similar to the one Dan had seen earlier on the television. It described how a flock of seagulls had caused extensive damage to some storefronts by smashing into the windows, and that someone had been hurt (probably by broken glass, Dan thought) and sent to the hospital. Confused, he dropped the clippings back to the table and picked the suture needle up again.

"Okay, so what was it you want to ask me about? This," he nodded at the newspaper clipping, "is terrible, but I don't see how I can help you with solving it. It sounds like a gang thing. Maybe an initiation. And I don't see what it has to do with some gulls getting lost and breaking a few store windows."

"Paper lied, Daniel. Not what happened. Storekeeper not killed by gang scum or thieves. Was killed by birds."

A cold finger slid down Dan's spine. He stopped, hand poised above the gash on Rorschach's forearm. The suture needle in his hand trembled. His voice flat and expressionless, he said, "What?"

_Please, God, let me have heard that wrong._


	12. Chapter 12

"Not just the owls tonight, Daniel. Birds are attacking people, killing them. Read another article yesterday, homeless man was killed in park by pigeons, face eaten away."

Rorschach stopped and fell silent; tapping his fingers on the tabletop in a pattern that Dan recalled as indicating frustration at not being able to get his full meaning across. Dan remembered seeing a lot of that fidgety high-strung hand tapping during the year before Keene.

After a few uncomfortably long moments during which neither of them spoke, Rorschach drew in a deep breath then exhaled sharply, shoulders rising and dropping. He then made an obvious effort to still his hand, balling it into a fist before continuing. "Saw it happen myself yesterday morning. Birds killed a man in back of his own store. Pecked him to death, took his eyes out. Took his face. Went after storekeeper's wife and myself as well. Would have killed us too, but reached shelter in time. Storage room at back of store. Birds couldn't get in."

Dan's blood ran cold as he turned this information over in his head, examining it from all angles. He silently counted to twenty and then spoke, keeping his voice as calm as possible. "Okay, maybe you'd better tell me exactly what happened, starting from the beginning."

During the next forty-five minutes Dan stitched up the gash on Rorschach's forearm and tended some of his other wounds as he listened to his ex-partner tell him not just one, but two stories that made no sense at all; impossible stories.

During that time Dan spoke only twice. The first time was when he was halfway through suturing the gash on Rorschach's forearm as he listened to Rorschach describe the birds' attack on himself and the murdered storeowner's wife behind the couple's grocerette. When Rorschach paused for breath, Dan asked, "Do you know what kind of birds they were?"

Rorschach shrugged and shook his head. "Different kinds. No owls. Mostly pigeons and seagulls, but some other birds too. Big ones, all black."

"Black---were they crows or blackbirds?"

"Don't know. Is there a difference?"

"Yeah, they're two completely different birds. How big were they? As big as the gulls, or smaller?"

He stopped suturing as Rorschach moved to hold his hands about a foot apart. "Bodies about that long. Same size as seagulls."

Dan nodded, "Crows."

Rorschach cocked his head questioningly. "Does it matter, Daniel?"

Dan shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe. Crows are a lot smarter than blackbirds. Go on." _Listen to yourself, stop playing along with him! Just let him talk and try to figure out what you're going to do in the meantime._ He resumed stitching the wound, concentrating his attention on his task and trying to keep his agitation from becoming extreme enough that Rorschach was bound to notice it.

The second interruption came while he was applying a thin film of antibiotic ointment to Rorschach's wounded neck and scored ear. As Rorschach described how the owls had descended from the sky onto the Knot Tops, Dan's fingers encountered a rough area as they brushed over the edge of the partially rolled-up mask. He stopped and went over the area again more carefully, his fingertips slipping up under the mask's edge a bit to feel the inside of it, finding the material rough on that side as well.

Rorschach turned his head sharply, as if Dan had set off some type of tripwire alarm by touching the mask. He went very still as Dan took hold of the mask's edge and examined it closely, focusing on a patch near the edge of the mask that looked partially melted. "What happened there?"

Rorschach sounded tense, almost flustered as he responded. "Owl's claw punched through face. Need to borrow hot plate and an iron, Daniel, to reinforce repairs."

Studying the crudely patched break in the mask, Dan was suddenly very aware of how close he was to Rorschach; close enough to feel the heat rising from his skin, his face mere inches away from the other man's ear. Feeling a little flustered himself, Dan pulled back and nodded, saying, "Uh...sure, man. No problem."

 _Huh._ Dan had always wondered whether the mask was somehow self-repairing and, if not, how Rorschach dealt with fixing it when the inevitable happened and it was torn or otherwise damaged. Yet another new thing he had learned about his ex-partner today, along with the fact that Rorschach had evidently lost his mind.

When Rorschach finally finished, his voice was cracked and hoarse. Dan reflected that this was probably the most talking the man had done in a long time, possibly in years.

Sitting in grim silence, Rorschach cocked his head to one side and studied Dan, his body language saying that he expected Dan to know exactly why these things were happening. Appalled, Dan could only stare at his former friend, shocked at how badly his old partner had deteriorated. And rack his brains as he might, Dan couldn't think of a single thing to say.

This was what six long years of working alone with his dark and circular paranoid thoughts as his only companions had done to Rorschach. He'd gone mad, had completely broken with reality.

Every sound, each tiny creak of the house settling or the air conditioning unit rattling became amplified to Dan in the heavy silence that fell over the kitchen as Rorschach waited for him to speak, to tell him what was going on (Dan suddenly thought of Byron up in Maine, waiting for someone to come and explain to him what had gone wrong with it all, and shuddered).

Desperate for something to do while he waited for inspiration to strike and give him some idea of what he should say to Rorschach, Dan busied himself with getting up and pouring coffee for both of them. He carefully added sugar and milk to both cups (making one cup offensively, perfectly sweet because how could he forget that particular formula?) and prayed that Rorschach wouldn't pick up on his growing agitation.

Dan believed that an owl had attacked Rorschach. He could see the evidence of it before his eyes in the wounds on the man's neck and arm, in the crumpled and broken primary feathers produced from Rorschach's coat pocket. But the idea that a dozen owls had attacked a gang in coordination, that a flock of seagulls and perching birds like pigeons and crows had actually mobbed and killed a man in back of his own store, that pigeons had covered a sleeping homeless man in the park and pecked him to death was just insane.

Rorschach obviously believed it. Dan could hear the conviction in his voice, the intensity, and there was only one explanation for it. Rorschach was hallucinating.

 _He’s had some kind of psychotic break. He really believes that a flock of birds killed some storeowner and pecked his eyes out, that they attacked him too, and that pigeons ate a homeless man's face. He thinks a dozen owls organized and flew in like the Marines to attack those Knot Tops._

Dan concentrated on his coffee's strong, slightly oily bitter flavor while trying to tease some thread of reality out of what Rorschach had told him, to try and understand what was happening behind his old friend's shifting cipher of a face to make him think these things were real.

 _Maybe a bunch of things combined to set off his paranoia; the heat, the news stories about gulls busting up windows, that poor guy getting murdered behind his store--sounds like that was pretty horrific, the killers mutilated his face and carved out his eyes. And there were probably pigeons all over the roofs surrounding the store; maybe that played into his delusions somehow? Maybe being attacked by the owl tonight triggered some kind of psychotic episode?_

Dan closed his eyes, frustrated and feeling more than a little frightened. _I don't know. Shit, I'm not qualified to deal with this! He needs therapy and anti-psychotic drugs, not someone to play along with his paranoid fantasies._

A new thought occurred to him. _Could he be under the influence of some kind of drug, some hallucinogen? Shit, it would've had to have happened at least a day ago for him to be carrying those clippings with him._

Dan kept sipping his coffee, studying Rorschach as closely as he dared without fear of setting off his ex-partner's radar.

 _Or maybe he's hallucinating because he hit his head and he has brain damage._

Rorschach bent his head to take a sip of the coffee Dan had handed to him. Despite the dire seriousness of the situation, Dan felt a spike of nostalgic affection and couldn't help smiling when Rorschach made an appreciative noise as he had his first taste of the sugary brew.

It was horribly depressing to realize that out of the three reasons he could come up with that might explain what Rorschach had told him tonight, the most optimistic choice was to think that he'd been given an hallucinogen strong enough for him to be still seeing and hearing things a day or more after being dosed with it.

A head injury was certainly possible, given his lifestyle and the fact that he'd recently fallen off a roof and been worked over by multiple assailants. But Dan had to acknowledge that a head injury bad enough to make Rorschach hallucinate scenarios this involved would likely cause other physical symptoms too, like slurred speech or impaired motor skills. And so far tonight he'd seen nothing like that in the man. Rorschach was obviously in a fair amount of pain and moving a little stiffly; but other than that and his obvious injuries he seemed physically all right. And Dan had noticed no stumbling or serious hesitations in his speech, no garbled words or vacant searches for forgotten syllables.

Unfortunately, his hallucinogenic drug theory had a similar strike against it. From what Dan knew about hallucinogens, anything strong enough to make someone experience the vivid, detailed scenarios that Rorschach had recounted would likely cause other physical symptoms in its victim; tremors, loss of coordination, impaired speech.

No, Dan had to admit that the most likely explanation here was that Rorschach had finally completely lost his mind. A sudden schoolboy litany of phrases paraded through his head; _his cheese slid off his cracker, toys in the attic, riding the Disoriented Express, all his dogs aren't barking, a sandwich shy of a picnic; and lucky you, Dan, he's dropped by to share it with you---_

Dan cringed and slapped himself mentally, hard. _Get hold of yourself, right now. Your ex-partner, for whom you'd have taken a bullet at one time (and be honest, still might), is here safe in your house instead of rotting in some abandoned basement somewhere like you were afraid he was._

Dan suddenly felt very weary. He put one hand up to his face, covering his eyes. Ridiculously, he felt tears prick the inside of his closed eyelids and he gritted his teeth and drew in a deep harsh breath.

 _He's alive, that's what's important. So yeah, when I envisioned this moment happening it was a lot more like him showing up to say that he'd thought things over and decided that he missed me. But the reality is that he's showed up to say "Evening, Daniel. Birds are murdering people, tell me why," and have a mental breakdown in your kitchen. Get over it, now, and start thinking of how you can help him._

"Daniel"

 _Shit._

Dan opened his eyes to see Rorschach standing right in front of him, evidently tired of waiting for an explanation.

 _Oh boy, here we go._


	13. Chapter 13

Close enough that Dan fought the impulse to lean away from the sheer intensity of it, Rorschach looked up into Dan's face. His voice was low and gravelly when he spoke.

"Daniel. Need to know why these things happened. You're the expert on birds, you must know what could make them do this."

Dan couldn't remember when he'd last been this nervous about anything. Because even though he knew how to correctly approach an injured wild animal, this was still a man you could easily cut yourself on; all bitter strength and sharp edges. And if Rorschach were indeed as mentally compromised as Dan feared, this situation had the potential to turn very ugly, very fast. And if that happened, Dan really didn't know what he'd do.

But regardless, he had to try and get Rorschach to see reason, no matter how unlikely he was to succeed. Otherwise, he'd just vanish into the concrete wilderness again and Dan would have lost what was possibly his best chance of getting his old friend and former partner some real help. He'd have to play this very carefully.

"Rorschach. These things you saw, these attacks. I've never heard of a flock of birds behaving that way, it's very, very...anomalous. Are you absolutely sure of what you saw?"

Rorschach stood still, masked face angled upward to look directly into Dan's face. His voice was a low rumble edged with impatience. "Yes."

Dan sensed a gathering energy in the rigid stance of the other man's body and guessed that his line of questioning wasn’t going over very big with Rorschach so far. He swallowed, and forged ahead. "It's just that I, I don't see how it could have happened that way."

At that, Rorschach sucked in a breath and tilted his head, cracking his neck. His arms went straight and tense against his sides, hands curling into fists.

This was absolutely not going the way Dan had hoped it would. He gentled his voice even further, hoping it would strike a chord somewhere inside this battered, unwashed, underfed and unbalanced creature that his ex-partner had become. "I mean, there was nothing in that newspaper article about the store owner's murder that mentioned birds. You said his wife was there too, I'd think she'd have said something about it when she talked to the cops."

When he answered, Rorschach's voice was, if possible, even flatter and more monotone than before. "Wife is Vietnamese, doesn't speak English. Husband did. Police probably didn't strain themselves finding an interpreter."

Dan watched the ink patterns on Rorschach's mask flow, divide, and merge hypnotically as he considered this bit of information and wondered briefly how Rorschach knew that the woman's dead husband had spoken English. Had his ex-partner actually known these people? Shaking his head, he said, "Okay, but are you _sure_ nothing happened to you that might have made you see things or, or… _remember_ things differently from how they actually happened? You just fell off a roof and you're pretty banged up. Did you stop to think that you may have a head injury and it's affecting how you perceive things?"

***

Daniel didn’t believe him.

Unseen behind the protection of his monochromatic armor, Rorschach's eyes widened in astonishment. _Daniel didn’t believe him._ He felt his face flush and an acid heat swelled up in his throat.

"You think I _imagined_ this? _Think I'm lying_?" He hissed at Daniel, his voice thick and distorted with rage, and took a step toward his ex-partner. Daniel's eyes widened and he put his hands up defensively, taking a half step back. The flash of fear that Rorschach saw in his eyes sickened him but it also made him stop in his tracks, breathing hard, fists clenching and unclenching convulsively. Daniel's voice was wavering and uneven as he answered.

"No, of course I don’t think you--that you're _lying_ , Rorschach. Please, calm down. I believe that you _think_ you saw what you saw. It's just that there's nothing in my experience that would account for what you're telling me. It just couldn't have happened the way that you say it did." Daniel trailed off, looking helpless, his hands spread wide. "There has to be some other explanation."

It was obvious. Daniel did think that he'd imagined it all, thought Rorschach was out of his mind, that he was _insane_. Rorschach could hear it easily in the rising nervousness in Daniel's voice, in the apprehensive, frightened body language. He'd been wrong, there was no help for him here.

Shaking with fury and other emotions that he refused to quantify or acknowledge, Rorschach snarled, “Thought you would help. Obviously mistaken.” He snatched his hat up off the table and jammed it onto his head. “Sorry to disturb you, Daniel. Go back to hiding in your kitchen.”

Stooping to scoop up his shirt, jacket, and trench coat, Rorschach spun on his heel and strode toward the door to the Owl’s Nest, intending to be as far away from Daniel as possible by daybreak.

Down in the Nest he stopped beside Archie to put the rest of his uniform back on, choking out a half-snarl, half-sob of frustrated rage when his torn shirt ripped even further as he wrestled it on. He gave up on the rest and simply threw the trench coat on over the tattered shirt, rolling his damaged vest and jacket into a ball and tucking it under one arm.

 _Stupid!_ He growled, beyond furious with himself. So very stupid to think that Dreiberg would be willing to help him solve a case after all this time, that he would unquestioningly accept what Rorschach had to say now as he would have once, years ago. Those days of trust were obviously long gone. Daniel thought he was insane and surely wanted no part of his insanity.

The unsutured gash across his chest burned and stung as it oozed fresh blood, pulled open again by his vehement actions. Rorschach latched on to the pain, using it to focus himself as he resumed walking toward the tunnel entrance. He had to get away from here, had to regroup and decide what to do next.

***

As the door swung shut behind Rorschach, Dan took a deep breath and slowly let it out, hating himself a little for the intense feeling of relief that washed over him. For a few seconds there, he'd been sure that Rorschach was going to attack him and the resulting adrenaline rush was still spiking through his body.

The thought crossed his mind that Rorschach might reconsider and return for round two, and for just a moment he thought about the pistol Hollis had given him last year, which Dan now kept on the top shelf of his bedroom closet. Then he shoved the thought vehemently away, appalled at himself for even considering it. If Rorschach did return for a fight, Dan would do his best to defend himself without resorting to _that_.

It had been a long time since his body had ramped itself up to combat readiness, and although his heart was pounding alarmingly hard it wasn't a completely unwelcome feeling. Dan felt suddenly sharper and more focused than he'd felt in a long time.

And out of that clarity came a sudden knowledge, so sharp and vivid that Dan would swear later it hadn't come from inside his head; that someone at his shoulder had spoken it quietly into his ear.

 _Go after him, now, and bring him back. If you don't, you'll never see him again._

Dan had never had a clairvoyant vision, didn't really believe in them despite what his Aunt Greta had to say about her own occasional premonitions and their supposedly unfailing accuracy. But he suddenly knew, as surely as he knew his own name that if he let Rorschach leave now, the next time Dan saw him again in this world would be on the news when they announced his capture or his death.

Galvanized, he pounded down the stairs after Rorschach, riding the sudden wave of adrenaline and certainty. Idiotically, he found himself grinning as he did, his nerves vanishing under the sudden rush; because no matter what happened next, he was finally taking action.

***

As he approached the tunnel entrance Rorschach heard heavy running footsteps behind him, then Daniel shouted.

“ _Rorschach! **Stop!**_ ”

It was a command, and there was a steel-hard note to it that Rorschach hadn’t heard in many years. It pierced his fury and touched an atrophied but still vital instinct that knew this tone as something to heed no matter what.

Despite his justified outrage, Rorschach stopped and waited, tense as a strung bow and still shaking with anger, hands fisted tight at his sides. Daniel's footsteps echoed quietly in the cavernous empty depths of the tunnel as he approached. Rorschach whirled to face him, fists raised and ready.

Daniel's hands were held out in a pacifying gesture, but his voice and eyes were firm and steady and there was a light in his eyes that had been missing before.

"Rorschach. I’m sorry you're upset, but just stop. Please listen to me. I need you to understand that you’re asking me to believe something that is unbelievable to me."

He paused to straighten his glasses and then looked directly into Rorschach's face, his expression for once unreadable and that strange energy still lighting his face. There was complete conviction in Daniel's voice when he spoke.

"Look, Rorschach, you came to me for information because I know things about birds, right? Well, you're right, I do. I do know about how birds behave, and they don’t attack people unless they're defending their territory, their nest, or their young. Not unless they’re sick in a way that affects their brains."

"And even then, different types of birds _don’t_ band together in a flock to attack people even if they are sick, especially in the numbers that you say you saw. And owls don't flock, period, and they don't attack cooperatively either. They just don’t."

He paused and ran a hand through his hair. Exhaling sharply, he looked like he was searching for what to say next, then shook his head and continued. "It's kind of like telling me you saw a walrus driving a taxicab. I can believe that you saw it, but there would _have_ to be another explanation for what you saw because I know that walruses don't drive cars."

Rorschach listened, saying nothing but absorbing Daniel's stance and the assured tone of his voice. He nodded once at Daniel, to let him know that he was considering his words. Daniel nodded back, obviously relieved that Rorschach was listening to him.

"So when I ask myself what's more likely; that hundreds of birds of different types would suddenly decide to band together to attack and kill people, or that you sustained a head injury or got dosed with some type of serious hallucinogen, I have to go with the most likely choice. Which is that you either got dosed somehow, or were hit really hard on the head, buddy."

The familiar name struck Rorschach like a lash and he closed his eyes, unseen behind the mask, astonished by how much it hurt.

***

Rorschach seemed to deflate a bit at his last statement and Dan knew he'd struck a chord there. Both of them were all too familiar with what mind-altering drugs could do to people, and at this point he was just praying that the explanation for Rorschach's visions would turn out to be, unlikely as Dan knew it was, that he'd gotten dosed with a serious whack of long-lasting hallucinogens. Because the alternatives were far, far worse.

Dan dared to breathe a tentative sigh of relief. At least Rorschach was listening quietly to him now, for what that was worth. As he studied the other man, Rorschach turned his face away, fists dropping down to his sides. Dan could hear him breathing, ragged and harsh behind the mask.

Slowly, again moving as if he were approaching an injured wild animal, Dan walked toward his ex-partner. Rorschach's fists stayed clenched at his sides as Dan approached him, stopping a few feet away.

If it had been a different time, Dan would have reached out and placed a hand on the other man's shoulder, but he knew better than to try that now. Dan looked into his ex-partner's unreadable mask. It reflected back only what Dan could imagine he saw in its shifting patterns and he wished, not for the first time, for the power to see through the damned thing, to read what was in Rorschach's real face. Still keeping his voice as even and calm as possible, he tried to explain further.

"Look, there’s a reason why people use dogs, not birds, for protection and to fight in wars. It's simple to train a pack of dogs to attack something cooperatively."

As he spoke, Rorschach averted his face and a small choking noise escaped him. Dan frowned and filed it away for later reference (assuming there was a later), but for now he let it go and continued without pausing.

"It's easy to train a group of dogs to attack on command because they evolved to hunt cooperatively in the wild and to take direction from their pack leaders. But birds don't work that way, not even birds of prey. Birds don’t hunt in packs. A mated pair might attack together to fight off a threat to their young or their territory, but they wouldn't hunt as a pair. And I have never, ever heard of a group of birds banding together to attack a person in the way you're describing. Their brains just aren't wired that way."

"I don’t think you’re lying, but there just has to be another explanation for what happened. Think. Could you have possibly been drugged with something that made you hallucinate some of what you've been seeing?"

The other man was silent for a long moment, long enough that Dan started to think he was just going ignore the question. He was just beginning to rack his brains for what to say next when Rorschach shuddered and cleared his throat with a rusty noise. When he spoke, Rorschach's voice was low and devoid of anger. He sounded uncertain, almost hesitant.

"When they...I thought, thought that," He stopped and coughed, clearing his throat again. When he continued his voice was a bit stronger although he still stumbled over his words a bit.

"Thought it, the owl, that it _was_ an hallucination. At first. The owl, when it dropped on his face and tore out his eye. Thought I had to be imagining it, dreaming it while dying."

Dan realized what Rorschach was saying and for the second time that night found himself dangerously close to tears.

And he resolved right then and there that, while the creatures that had saved his old friend earlier tonight were nothing to do with him, Rorschach's delirious visions to the contrary, Dan would do whatever he could now to try and rescue him from whatever dark pit he'd stumbled (or voluntarily leaped) into. If he wasn't too late. He smiled at Rorschach and this time his smile was welcoming and free of apprehension.

"Rorschach. Let's talk about this some more upstairs, all right? Come on, buddy."

The dangerous fists finally unclenched and the gloved hands hung loose at Rorschach's sides as he regarded Dan silently.

Dan turned and started walking toward the stairs, glancing back over his shoulder as he did. His heart jumped when, after a moment's hesitation, Rorschach followed. And Dan smiled again and allowed himself to feel a flicker of hope.


	14. Chapter 14

Back upstairs, Rorschach once more shrugged off his coat and shirt. Dan noticed that the shirt was ripped and torn even worse now and mentally checked it off as a goner.

The atmosphere in the kitchen was still stiff and awkward, but it also felt different now. Something between them had, if not clicked, at least shifted enough to lessen the tension between them slightly. Rorschach no longer seemed as if he were teetering on the raw edge of violence, and when Dan indicated the other vacant chair at the table he sat down without hesitation. Dan nodded in approval.

"All right, I'm going to finish patching you up and then we'll talk about this some more."

Dan 'tsk'ed as he wet a fresh washcloth with antiseptic and started to clean away the fresh blood that had seeped from the reopened cut traversing Rorschach's chest. Obviously a knife wound, it was a shallow, long slice that began an inch above one nipple and ended just beneath the other. Rorschach flinched several times as he swabbed away at the drying blood and Dan knew it was because he was too close, not because he was hurting him.

 _God, he's just as touch-phobic as he was when we first met, even worse._

Freshly disconcerted, Dan had to step away for a moment. He moved to the counter to grab some more coffee, then turned and stopped, coffeepot in hand, to study his ex-partner.

Rorschach sat hunched over, elbows resting on the table. Now that he seemed less tightly wound up, Dan could clearly see the slump of fatigue in Rorschach's shoulders and the curved line of his back, vertebrae standing out in a sharp knobby line far more starkly than Dan remembered. Weariness was evident in every line of the other man's body. Dan's mouth tightened as he watched Rorschach sway slightly in his chair.

 _I have to get him to stay here and get some sleep. He needs to rest someplace safe out of this heat and humidity, at least for a day. I just wish I could get him to really clean up before I stitch this cut and tape his ribs. I hate to layer bandages on over all this filth and blood, and is that owl crap on the back of his trench?_

Dan topped up their mugs with fresh coffee, then leaned down to examine the coat lying crumpled on the floor. He looked at the pale spatter on the back panel of the trench coat and realized that the back of Rorschach's coat was dappled with not just one, but numerous white splotches.

 _Well, it sure looks like more than one owl let loose on his coat. That really ought to be washed, just in case they were carrying parasites or something else that he could catch---_

Then Dan had a brilliant idea. It was one of those ideas where you're surprised after you have it that a little bell didn't go 'ding' and a brightly lit bulb appear over your head for all to see.

He compressed his lips into a thin line and narrowed his eyes thoughtfully, looking closely at the chest laceration and neck punctures. Then he straightened up and looked into Rorschach's face, saying, "You know, the bleeding's pretty much stopped from these wounds. What's more important right now is to get you disinfected and make sure you don't have any infectious agents lingering on your skin or hair. Or clothing; we need to disinfect your clothes too, and get rid of any bacteria or parasites they might have picked up from the owls---or from any other birds you might have been in contact with."

Rorschach tilted his head toward Dan. When he spoke he sounded annoyed and more than a little suspicious. "What are you talking about, Daniel? Should be fine. Have come into contact with worse filth than this many times and didn't get sick." He _'hrmphed'_ and growled, "Thought you believed I was hallucinating it, anyway."

"Not about the owl attacking you, I can see for myself that happened."

Dan thought back to the safety talk he'd given a year ago to a group of volunteer students banding shorebirds in Nova Scotia and his voice took on the same calm professorial tone he'd used then. "Look, there are a lot of different parasites and diseases that wild birds can carry that you can catch from coming into close contact with them, especially if you've been in contact with their droppings. Well, you've certainly been in close contact. And I don’t know if you noticed, but your coat has a lot of bird crap on it. There’s some on your hat, too."

Dan could see the skeptical wheels turning behind that shifting mask as Rorschach sat sphinx-like, watching him. He figured it might be a good idea to elaborate. "I realize you've never worked with wild animals, so there's no way you would have known any of the precautions that you need to take when handling wildlife, but first off you always have to assume that any animal you come in contact with is carrying something. If you don't, that's how people end up with leptospirosis or something just as unappetizing."

He started ticking off diseases on his fingers. “Psittacosis, Aspergillosis, Query fever, Encephalitis, Histoplasmosis, Cryptococcosis, Cryptosporidiosis, Salmonellosis…shall I go on? The symptoms can range from something like the flu all the way up to stuff like pneumonia and meningitis. I'm sure you get the picture.”

Head cocked, Rorschach regarded him in silence, fingertips once more tapping a jerky rhythm on the table. _Probably dusting off his old mental checklist of signs that Daniel is lying_ , Dan thought. _Well, at least he's still listening to me._

Dan wasn't lying. Well, not really. He absolutely was exaggerating the danger, though; half of the diseases he'd mentioned weren't normally found in avian populations this far north. However, there was no way that Rorschach would know that. "You need to disinfect yourself and your clothes as soon as possible. And I’ll feel a whole lot better myself about treating the rest of your wounds if you’re not crawling with potential zoonotic infectious agents."

Another thought occurred to Dan. "Oh, and one more thing; if you _did_ get dosed with some kind of hallucinogen, it's possible that you were sprayed with it instead of ingesting it somehow. And if you were, you might still have traces of it on your clothing or your skin. We can't take any chances with that, because if you did hallucinate some of these things because of a drug, then it's a really powerful one."

He put a hand on Rorschach’s shoulder, ignoring the way the other man stiffened up when he did. “Go. Take. A. Shower. Right now. Scrub yourself down completely, no messing around. Use the Phisohex soap; it’s in a green bottle in the cabinet under the sink. Wash your hair with it, too. Oh, and if you can stand to run some warm water up your nose, do it and then blow your nose to get rid of any bacteria or viruses you might be carrying in your nasal passages."

Displaying no reaction at all, Rorschach was still and quiet as a statue under his hand. Dan removed his hand from the other man's shoulder and stepped back, wondering if his sudden barrage of cleansing instructions had just completely flummoxed Rorschach. Or maybe it was the idea of being so thoroughly, devastatingly dirt-free that was throwing him for a loop. Fearing that an explosion (or at the very least a vehement refusal) was imminent, Dan forged ahead, still using his most authoritative tone.

"Leave everything you’re wearing in the hall so that I can disinfect your clothes, I’ll find you something to wear while you’re stuff’s being washed. Oh, and wash your mask too, inside and out. The Phisohex should be safe to use on it. When you're done I'll take a turn and wash up myself, just to be safe.”

The finger tapping slowed, then stopped. After a long, long moment Rorschach sighed and shook his head, muttering something under his breath too low for Dan to hear.

Dan restrained himself from openly grinning as Rorschach bent to pick up the trench coat and started removing things from its pockets, putting them on the kitchen table. Flashlight, heavily annotated subway map, plastic bag full of black pepper, a bit of loose change and several pencils, their ends gnawed. Dan smiled; however much the man himself might have changed, the contents of Rorschach's pockets remained much the same as they'd ever been.

The last thing he placed on the table was a grimy battered journal. Of course it wasn't the one Dan remembered last seeing, but it was very similar. As Rorschach made to drop the coat back to the floor, Dan held out his hand.

"Wait. Let me see the coat." He took the coat from Rorschach, then went into one of the cabinets and came out with a couple of empty specimen slides. He then used the flat edge of a paring knife to take scrapings from several of the spatter marks on the trench coat, taking care not to damage the fabric. "Okay, now we can wash it. I want to look at these specimens under a microscope and see if I can find any evidence of parasites."

Rorschach got up and headed down the hallway to the bathroom. Dan followed him, then stopped as Rorschach reached the door to the bathroom and turned to look at him. Dan said, "Just toss your clothes out in the hall when you're ready, okay?"

Rorschach looked at him for a long moment and seemed like he was going to say something, then he simply nodded and went into the bathroom. As the bathroom door closed behind him Dan turned and went back into the kitchen. It wasn't until he was safely seated back at the table that he let himself exhale a long, slow breath out and relax, feeling like he was vibrating from the intensity of the last fifteen minutes.

He'd just bulldozed his ex-partner more severely than he'd ever dared to do during the ten years they were partnered, and Dan still couldn't quite believe that Rorschach hadn't just hauled off and decked him, then stalked out.

 _Damn, maybe I should have gotten up the nerve to do that more often,_ he thought.

After a few minutes, Dan peeked into the hall to see a bundle of cloth lying next to the closed bathroom door, topped by a battered fedora. Trench coat slung over one arm, Dan scooped the pile up and headed down the hall to the laundry room at the back of the house.

Dan figured if he threw some Nolvasan in with the laundry it should do an adequate job of disinfecting Rorschach's clothes. Bleach would be better, but some of the items looked pretty threadbare and Dan didn’t want to take chances on them falling apart in the washer or dryer if he used the necessary amount.

As he walked, he inspected the uniform and noticed some small rips and tears in the pants and coat. They looked like they could possibly have been made by hooked beaks. _Or by snagging on the sharp edges of a broken fire escape railing or by being dragged over splintering wooden pallets._ Dan tossed the bundle into the washer, then scrubbed his face with his hands and sighed.

 _That’s it, all reports are in and the verdict is that I am insane. Why, oh why, am I voluntarily getting embroiled again with my own personal condensed version of the four Horsemen of the Apocalypse?_

 _He’s always been War, then he became Death, too, after the thing in 1975. Now he’s got Pestilence covered._ Dan looked down at the filthy bundle of cloth in the washer and tried to breathe only through his mouth.

 _And Famine, too._ He thought about the prominent ribs sticking out under the scarred, battered skin of Rorschach’s torso. _I’ll bet it’s been weeks, maybe months since he ate a real meal. I don’t think he’s starving himself deliberately; he either can't afford to buy food or he’s just forgetting to eat like he did back in '76. I remember, most of that year I had to practically force him to sit down and eat whenever he showed up. At the very least, I have to get a few calories into him before he disappears again._

He threw some Nolvasan and detergent in with the load and started the washer. Then he headed back to the kitchen to fix something for them both to eat.


	15. Chapter 15

Safely hidden in Daniel's bathroom, Rorschach looked at himself in the mirror over the sink, fingering the rough patch near the bottom of his face. He started to take off his mask and grimaced as it stuck and pulled, glued to his skin with dried sweat and blood.

Careful of the mended part, he peeled it off of his head and placed it in the sink basin, then turned on the tap. He retrieved the bottle of Phisohex soap (it was exactly where Daniel had said it would be) and started gently washing the grime from his real face, inside and out. As he worked, he looked up and caught a glimpse of Kovacs' face in the mirror.

Instead of avoiding the sight as he usually did he surveyed the haggard features, carefully studying the eyes. The pupils in the flat brown irises looked to be of equal size to him and weren't overly contracted or expanded, which was good, and there was no visible blood in the sclera, also good. He nodded, relieved that the most obvious signs of a concussion were absent. Aside from several new bruises and abrasions and a split lip, it was the same unlovely assemblage of rough features he always saw.

Even back when he was still Walter he had never liked looking at himself. Although Rorschach had never been burdened with the flaw of vanity, he still found the sight of Kovacs' ridiculously ugly face disturbing. Of course, his features' relative attractiveness meant less than nothing; it wasn't his real face after all, it was only his disguise.

Physical face inspected and real face cleansed, he turned his attention to the spacious bathtub. Stubborn habit made him start counting the reasons why he didn't need to immerse himself in chemical-laden water.

When Rorschach had pared his system of self-maintenance down to the pure essentials, showering daily had been one of the first things to fall by the wayside. After all, humans in previous eras had gotten by perfectly well bathing sporadically, if at all.

Since the night of teeth and bones and smoke had ripped apart and stripped away his illusions about the world, Rorschach had seen many things for the useless rituals that they were. It wasn’t as if the churning filth of society that he waded through every night until it seeped into every crevice and every fiber of his being would ever wash off with anything as effete and bloodless as mere soap and water.

Daily ablutions were an artificial nicety, like many of the other hypocritical rites performed by the so-called human beings in the city; meticulously observing their meaningless polite gestures while turning a blind eye to the horrors being perpetrated under their noses. Rorschach now washed only when he felt it was necessary, which wasn't often.

Dispensing with the unnecessary habit of daily bathing had proved to have its own advantages, too. For one thing it cut down on exposure to the city water and its unseen cocktail of fluoride and other potentially harmful agents, many of which could be absorbed through the skin. It also discouraged people from trying to interact with his Kovacs disguise. When people did find it necessary to deal with Kovacs, they conducted their business with him as swiftly as possible.

And the stench of decaying blood and nameless dark alley filth that permeated his uniform did nothing but bolster the city vermin's fear of Rorschach; perhaps recalling for them childhood fears of monsters, of shambling decayed bodies or sharp-toothed walking corpses that lurked in the dark places waiting to catch and rend the unwary.

However, Daniel hadn't been lying about the diseases and parasitic infections that wild birds harbored or about the potential danger of catching these things from them. Rorschach could hear the certainty in Daniel's voice, though he couldn't completely escape the feeling that he'd been gotten around in some way.

But Rorschach had come to Daniel specifically for advice about birds. It would be foolish not to admit that he was completely out of his league and that he needed to listen to what Daniel told him about dealing with these creatures. Daniel had worked with wild birds; he knew how to do it safely.

Daniel also had a definite point about making sure there was no danger of possible contamination from lingering remnants of an hallucinogen on his skin or clothes.

Rorschach paused for a moment to consider Daniel's theory about that, then shook his head with a skeptical growl; he privately didn't believe a drug existed that could alter his mind to the extent that it would cause him to hallucinate the bizarre events of the past day and night. Still, it was best to be sure. Daniel's instructions were dauntingly rigorous, but Rorschach could see the sense in them.

To be completely honest, though, his final decision to allow Daniel to railroad him into what would be the most thorough cleansing he'd ever undergone in his life was at least partly due to one simple fact; simmering in the additional sweat and muck produced by the brutal summer heat, especially the deadly temperatures of the last two weeks, had made things progress to such a degree that even he was faintly disgusted by himself, his own high odor and the sticky fetid griminess of his skin. He'd never have asked Daniel for the use of his shower, but at this point Rorschach was willing to be talked into it.

And though he was loathe to admit it, the prospect of being able to take a shower someplace private where he didn’t have to be on constant guard against having one of his horrendous neighbors or one of his landlady’s ever-present children (or even worse, his landlady) barging in on him was very attractive.

For a long time, whenever things got to the point that even Rorschach felt the need to wash he'd reluctantly used the showers in the communal floor bathroom of his boarding house, picking times when he was unlikely to encounter any of the other tenants.

But a few months ago he'd been taking a quick shower before sunrise (at an early enough hour that he had felt secure in the knowledge that no one else in the building was stirring yet) when Shairp had actually burst into the bathroom and cornered him.

Having successfully ambushed him, she yelled at Kovacs through the cracked and mildewed shower curtain about two month’s overdue rent and the smell from his apartment until, naked and mortified, he'd finally lost his composure and roared at her in Rorschach’s voice to get out. Since that incident, he had stopped using the showers at the boarding house altogether. (And started relying on the window as the sole entrance and egress from his room.)

Rorschach sighed and began to disrobe. Moving stiffly, he stripped down to bare skin. He then opened the bathroom door a crack and after a quick glance through the narrow opening to make sure that no one was in the hallway, deposited the sad, filthy bundle of clothes in the hall, tossing his boots, gloves and fedora on top of the pile.

Naked and vaguely uneasy about it, he stepped into the tub and pulled the shower curtain closed. He turned the shower on, adjusting the temperature down to slightly less than body temperature, then stood under the powerful spray and closed his eyes, tilting his head back to feel the lukewarm water pound his face and scalp, stinging where the skin was abraded.

Obedient to the letter of Daniel's instructions, he liberally slathered his body with the Phisohex soap and washed himself down thoroughly, careful not to re-open the wounds on his chest and neck. As he did he felt the beginnings of weeks' worth of dried sweat and grime start to come away, running down his legs and swirling down the drain in threads of blackish brown. He squeezed a large dollop of the liquid soap onto his head and worked it through his hair, scrunching his eyes shut against the resulting suds that dripped down his face. Careful and slow, he ran his fingertips over his scalp, feeling the skull underneath for soft spots and was pleased to find none.

As Rorschach scrubbed at himself he felt like some graying shell of decay was being sloughed off along with the filth. Suddenly feeling dizzy as well as exhausted, he leaned sideways against the shower wall. The tile felt cool and soothing as he rested his aching head there and he stayed that way for a while, eyes closed, until the wave of vertigo had passed.

After rinsing away the last remnants of the Phisohex soap, his skin felt strange and slightly greasy. Feeling light-headed and oddly detached from his surroundings, he reached for the bar of soap that sat in a niche in the shower wall, wanting to get rid of the unpleasant oily feeling on his skin.

As Rorschach picked up the soap, his nostrils flared slightly as the smell of it reached them and he surprised himself by holding the bar up to his nose and inhaling, breathing in the distinctive, familiar scent. Daniel was still using the same type of soap, something imported and hard-milled with a smell of sandalwood and some darker and earthier element.

Back in the 1960s when everything had been stronger and cleaner and better, Walter had loved the smell of that soap. He'd even stolen a bar or two from Daniel's bathroom. But it hadn't smelled as good when he used it in his own bath (back then he'd had a regular job and could afford the luxury of a studio apartment with its own tiny bathroom), and Walter had concluded that part of the attraction had been using it when showering at the brownstone, which for a while had felt like his own home. (None of his apartments had ever felt like home---at best they were temporary hiding places; somewhere to sleep and store his few possessions.)

The bar's surface was still slightly soft and tacky from being used and he realized that earlier this same day, only hours ago from the feel of it, Daniel had dragged this same bar of soap over his skin, over arms and legs and torso, every part of himself. In a sense, running it over his own skin was touching Daniel, too.

The thought and its accompanying picture was so vivid and disturbing that Rorschach nearly tossed the soap away because touching this object that had so recently been in such intimate contact with Daniel unsettled him badly, and it made something that was buried deep inside him under scorched and salted earth shift and roll uneasily in its grave.

Gritting his teeth, Rorschach held the bar underneath the shower stream and scrubbed at it until he felt satisfied that any part of it that had been in contact with Daniel's skin had been washed away, safely down the drain. Only then did he start to run the soap over his own body.

Like a child unable to leave a sore tooth alone, his mind kept circling back to the look on Daniel's face when he'd realized that Rorschach was actually there in front of him; how he'd jumped forward and thrown his arms around Rorschach without a moment's hesitation.

Daniel had never fully embraced and held him like that before, and under the doughy soft new flesh on Daniel’s frame Rorschach had felt underlying muscle which said that perhaps Nite Owl hadn’t yet gone completely away. And the tone of command in Daniel's voice downstairs when he'd shouted at Rorschach to stop had brought his heart into this throat because for an instant, down in the Owl's Nest, he'd heard his old partner.

As he lathered himself up again, this time using Daniel's soap, the smell of it surrounded him and he took a deep breath, eyes drifting shut. The drag of his fingers across soap-slicked skin felt far too good and he flushed, an odd sensation prickling along his skin and settling as a queasy lump of electricity in his belly. Tension uncoiled along his nerves turned raw and quivering, and that most despised part of his body responded to the rough touch of his hand before he snatched it away as if scalded by the implications of what he was doing.

Disgusted at himself, he turned the shower handle all the way to cold and let the frigid water shock his body back to reality as he rinsed himself off. This weakness, these unacceptable urges had been Walter's, not Rorschach's. He reassured himself that it was nothing, really; merely his worn nerves and overstressed body releasing tension, confused by being in Daniel's home once again and encountering old associations and stimuli that should no longer hold any meaning for Rorschach.

He turned off the water and stood motionless as the tub drained, watching the last of the water spin down the drain in a crystal-clear spiral. For the first time in a very long while, Rorschach's skin was so clean that it squeaked a bit when he ran his hand across it. So was his hair; as he threaded his fingers through it he felt the strands catch and drag along his fingertips, all traces of greasiness gone.

He dried himself and his face, then pulled the mask back on. Rorschach looked into the mirror at the face he was not ashamed to see. Its crisp black and white patterns held him for a long moment and he was struck yet again by its clean and simple beauty.

Outside the door was a bundle of neatly folded clothes; briefs, sweatpants, and an old Harvard t-shirt of Daniel's, worn but clean and far too small to fit Daniel at this point. Rorschach pulled the briefs and sweatpants on quickly, deciding the shirt should wait until his chest wound was stitched. There were socks, too, but he chose instead to pad barefoot down the hall to the kitchen, feeling strange and exposed wearing only the soft, clinging cotton with his real face as his only armor.


	16. Chapter 16

Dan washed his face and arms as thoroughly as he could at the kitchen sink, then ducked into his bedroom for a quick clothing change. The more fantastic aspects of Rorschach's story aside, it was just possible that Rorschach had picked up something from the owl that attacked him. Also, if a contact hallucinogen _was_ involved, Dan might have gotten residue on his hands while administering first aid. He'd take a shower later on after tending to the rest of Rorschach's injuries, but for now Dan judged that this partial cleansing should be good enough.

Still wondering whether he'd made a vast mistake by not simply showing Rorschach the door as soon as he'd started talking about killer birds, Dan tossed a can of tomato soup in a pot to heat up, then gathered some sandwich fixings together. In the middle of slapping cold cuts and cheese onto rye bread, he stopped, listening. The kitchen was oppressively quiet. The only sounds he could hear were the soft, rhythmic swish and clunk of the washer from down the hall and a faint susurrus from the shower. Gratified to hear the shower still going, Dan congratulated himself on having the foresight to replace his old water heater with an extra large capacity model several years ago.

Fifteen minutes later, Dan was done making sandwiches (one for himself, three for Rorschach). He turned off the burner under the soup and paused again, head cocked, frowning. _He's...actually been in there a long time._ Dan bit his lip, hoping that Rorschach was just really scrubbing himself down and that he hadn't collapsed in the tub.

 _That'll look good on the police report; **"1:15 a.m. Responders to 911 call found dead homeless man in wealthy lifelong bachelor's bathtub. Bachelor insists he was not slumming for hobos and had merely invited the derelict in for 'soup and sandwiches'. At one a.m. in the morning. Sure. Check vice arrest records for the name Dreiberg, Daniel."**_

After a few more minutes of listening to the shower's faint drumming through the walls, his nerves and growing apprehension finally got the better of him. Dan started down the hall toward the bathroom, but when he was halfway there he heard the water shut off. More relieved than he wanted to admit to himself, Dan breathed a sigh of relief and returned to the kitchen, where he busied himself setting the table.

Once everything was laid out, Dan sat down and waited for Rorschach to re-appear. As he sipped at his cooling coffee, he wondered what it said about how lonely he was right now that he was glad to have some company in the house, even the unannounced midnight company of his almost certainly crazy and probably dangerous ex-partner.

His gaze wandered around the kitchen and stopped at the bottle of Glenlivet on the counter. Looking at it gave him an unpleasant guilty twinge. Dan shot a furtive glance toward the hallway, then got up and put the scotch away in the cupboard, shoving it behind a box of baking mix and firmly closing the cabinet door. Shaking his head at himself, he sat back down and took another swig of coffee.

 _What do I care whether he picks up on my drinking, or what he might think about it? Oh man, I really have no business calling him crazy, do I? When I'm obviously a little unbalanced myself. You know this can't end well. But here I am. I just don't know whether--_ Dan looked up and saw Rorschach standing in the kitchen doorway, having approached noiselessly on bare feet, and his breath caught in his throat as his thoughts stuttered to a halt.

Wearing Dan's sweatpants (too long, of course, and rolled up at the ankle), Rorschach was paused at the kitchen threshold with his head cocked to one side, watching Dan. For a scary, wonderful time-slipped instant, Dan saw his partner coming into the kitchen for their customary post-patrol confab over their customary post-patrol meal, and the broad smile that he gave Rorschach was automatic and instinctive. When he glanced down, it seemed strange to not see the table cluttered with notebooks and maps; spidery diagrams and notations in crabbed shorthand spread across their pages.

Reality surfaced and scattered the illusion. The smile slipped from Dan's face, leaving it tired and uncertain. He cleared his throat and spoke, his voice a bit hoarse. "Hey. I made some sandwiches, and there's soup too. You must be hungry after the night you've had. Why don't you go ahead and eat while I grab a quick shower? Then I'll take care of that cut on your chest and we'll talk about what to do."

For a moment Rorschach remained in the doorway, studying Dan. Then he nodded and without saying a word, sat down at the table and started eating. As Rorschach ate, Dan could see that he was trying to slow down and not simply cram the food into his mouth; but it was still obvious that Rorschach was ravenous. Taking the other man's appetite as a hopeful sign that he didn't have any internal injuries, Dan retreated to the bathroom to take a shower and think about what to do next.

***

Standing in the shower, Dan soaped himself up and considered possible plans of action to try and improve his ex-partner's circumstances. Nothing really feasible came to mind, though. Short of having Rorschach involuntarily committed (and Dan shuddered as he thought about what a disaster _that_ would be), he had no idea how to go about getting his ex-partner the psychiatric help and medication that he so obviously needed.

But he did have a few ideas about how to improve Rorschach's physical condition, which would have to help his mental state, at least a bit. _He'll never admit it, but it's obvious that over and above all of his injuries, he's just completely run down and exhausted. I can see that he's got little or nothing left in his reserve tank. I wonder how long he's been running on fumes and sheer willpower? Quite a while, I bet._

He closed his eyes, overwhelmed with equal parts grief, despair, and compassion for his brilliant, valiant, fearless, and so very broken madman of an ex-partner. _I missed so many chances in the past to try and help him because I was afraid to push him. If I'd tried harder back in '75, maybe I could have gotten him to tell me what happened; to talk to me about whatever it was that broke him so badly. And when I retired in '77, I should never have let him walk away like I did. When he disappeared, I should have gone out and tried to find him; tracked him down somehow instead of trusting that he'd come back and see me when he was ready. He's been slowly losing his mind during these past six years and maybe I could have done something to keep that from happening._

Dan sighed and ducked under the spray to rinse his hair. _What he needs is to be someplace he can rest and eat regular meals, and not have to worry about anything for a month or two. The only way that's ever going to happen, though, is if he's booked into a padded room next to poor Lewis. But if I can get him to stay here for a few days, maybe even a week, he can at least heal up a little from that fall and the stomping he took._

While toweling off outside the shower, Dan paused to wipe a clear patch in the steamed-up mirror. He looked at his reflection and frowned, hating the helpless frustration and uncertainty he saw in his face. _I don't know if anything I do will make a difference at this point. It's probably too late to help him._ His mouth tightened into a determined line and his expression hardened, eyes narrowing. _But I have to try. He was my partner and my friend, once. I owe him that much, and this is probably my only chance. I am going to get him to stay here today and be out of this heat for a while, get some more food into him. And in the meantime, I can try to come up with some better ideas._

Deciding on a plan of action felt good; like it had earlier tonight when he'd dismissed the voice of caution and heeded his instincts instead, pounding down the basement stairs after Rorschach. He dressed quickly and headed back to the kitchen.

Still seated at the table, Rorschach was finishing his soup, having bypassed the niceties of using a spoon and instead opted for drinking it straight from the bowl. All three sandwiches were gone. Dan sat down and pushed his plate over toward Rorschach. "Here, man. I'm not hungry, really."

Rorschach shook his head, pushing the plate back toward Dan. "Not necessary, Daniel. Had enough." After a moment, he added more quietly, "Appreciate the food and coffee."

"No problem. If you're done for now, let's finish patching you up."

Suturing the long cut on Rorschach's chest took a while. As he worked, Dan observed the other man with brief sidelong glances, noting the telltale signs of pain and fatigue that were starting to bleed through Rorschach's stony façade. He could see it in the way Rorschach was holding himself and in the careful, slightly shallow way in which he was breathing now; the adrenaline-spurred endorphins that had carried Rorschach through tonight's battle and back to Dan's house had finally worn off. Dan wondered if a collapse might be in the cards after all.

As Dan prepared to sink the final suture, Rorschach swayed in his chair. Dan paused and held the needle away from the other man's skin, waiting to see if this was a precursor to Rorschach passing out. He tensed as Rorschach listed to one side, ready to catch him if he continued to slide out of the chair. But instead of fainting, Rorschach shook himself and straightened up, hissing as he drew in a deep breath. Sending up a silent prayer that he was just seeing pain and fatigue, not a concussion in action, Dan sank the last stitch.

After cleaning up the fresh blood that had seeped from the wound while it was being sutured, Dan laid a gentle hand on Rorschach's side, fingertips tracing the largest of the bruises that mottled the skin over his ribcage. "I need to tape you up now. I'll go as quickly as I can." Rorschach made an exasperated sound. "Just get on with it, Daniel. Wasting time."

Instead of starting right away, though, Dan spent a moment observing the other man's respiration. He was pleased to see both sides of Rorschach's chest rising and falling evenly and he shook his head, marveling anew at Rorschach's seemingly inhuman capacity to take punishment. "Man, you realize, don't you, how lucky you are that you don't have a broken back or flail chest, or a fractured skull? Falling several stories like you did, followed up by the beating you took? I'd say you definitely used up one of your nine lives tonight."

Rorschach 'hrm"ed and gave a tiny shrug. Sounding more tired than annoyed, he said, "Analogy doesn't really work, Daniel. Not a cat."

Snorting mirthlessly, Dan said, "Good thing, too, now that I think of it. At this point you're probably way past nine." He reached out and tapped Rorschach's left shoulder. "Okay, lift your arm up."

He frowned at the little grunt of pain that Rorschach couldn't quite suppress as he raised his arm up over his head to give Dan access to his left side. Hoping anew that Rorschach's ribs were merely cracked, Dan carefully ran a length of adhesive medical tape from the front of Rorschach's chest and along one rib, anchoring the other end at the middle of Rorschach's back. Then he picked up another length of tape and repeated the procedure, working his way down toward the bottom of Rorschach's ribcage.

When he was done taping, Dan applied arnica ointment to the worst of the remaining uncovered bruises on the other man's torso. As he ran salve-slick fingers over the scarred skin, he wondered whether the twitching and tooth-grinding this produced were from pain, or from discomfort at being touched. (Dan was pretty sure it was the latter.) He wondered how long it had been since Rorschach had allowed anyone to put their hands on him for any purpose other than fighting. Sadly, he was afraid that he knew the answer to that question, too.

Finally done, he laid his hand flat on Rorschach's side just under his bandaged ribs, feeling the warmth under his hand. Reluctant to break contact, Dan kept his hand there, just absorbing the fact that Rorschach was indeed solid and _there_.

The moment stretched out and became awkward. Rorschach turned his face toward Dan, ink gathering in dark clouds over where Dan knew his cheekbones were. He knew that in another few seconds Rorschach would shift from under his hand, and took the moment beforehand to stroke his thumb lightly across Rorschach's taped-up ribs, saying, "I'm glad to know you're alive. And I'm glad that you came here."


	17. Chapter 17

Dan was surprised when, instead of moving away, Rorschach stayed where he was, as if the light brush of Dan's thumb across his bandaged ribs had paralyzed him. Dan found himself unwilling to move either, and the hanging moment between them grew even stranger and more uncomfortable, more fraught with _something_ Dan couldn’t identify.

His heart sped up and adrenaline fizzled down Dan's nerves, making the hair rise along his arms. Breath held, he wondered whether Rorschach's stillness meant he was quietly building up a head of rage that was going to explode any second now _(Well then, get your hand off him, stupid! Before he belts you into next week!)_ , or whether something entirely different was happening. He stared into Rorschach's face, mesmerized by the dark patches shifting and spreading across his mask. A dozen more heartbeats ticked by, then Rorschach looked down and away. "Daniel, I-- _hrrn._ "

The low, raspy sound of his voice broke Dan's strange immobility. He pulled his hand away from Rorschach's side and stood up, clearing his throat loudly to cover his embarrassment. Dan walked to the sink, needing to put a bit of space between himself and whatever it was that had just happened--or had almost happened. He ran himself a glass of water and chugged it down. When he turned around, Rorschach was still sitting at the table, unmoving. Dan realized that his ex-partner wasn't going to say anything more, at least not right now.

Dan sat down again, this time in the chair across the table from Rorschach. He gestured at Rorschach's bandaged ribs and tried to sound as businesslike as possible as he said, "Okay. You know the drill. It'll hurt, but try to breathe as deeply as you can and cough every once in a while if you can stand to. Make sure you don't get fluid building up in your lungs."

Rorschach said curtly, "Know what to do, Daniel." He started tapping an impatient rhythm on the tabletop. "Need to discuss these murders, Daniel. Need to make plans. Are you going to help or not?"

Dan watched Rorschach's fingers moving, nails ticking against the tabletop and noticed that one of the ragged, gnawed-looking fingernails had been torn off. As he watched the battered hands move, Dan's uncertainty dissolved and crystallized into renewed determination. And before he could start second-guessing himself, Dan grasped the fresh resolve and ran with it. He leveled his gaze directly into Rorschach's face and said, "All right. I will work with you to help you solve this case. As long as we can agree on a few things first, about how we're going to work together."

The fingers stopped tapping. Rorschach's head tilted to one side, and there was a dangerous edge to his voice when he spoke. "Conditions, Daniel?"

***

Still on edge from the sensation of Daniel's hands on him, the initial rush of satisfaction and relief that Rorschach felt when Daniel said that he'd help him with the case vanished as he heard the rest of Daniel's statement. Rorschach leaned back in his chair, grunting as the chair rungs pressed into his injured back. Equally incensed and intrigued at Daniel's brazenness in laying down terms to him, Rorschach was very curious to know what those terms might be. Gingerly crossing his arms, he ignored the resulting twinge in his ribs and prepared to glare Daniel down. He nodded and growled, "Listening. Go on."

Daniel nodded back at him. "I will help you find out what's going on here. And if it turns out that there is more to this than some hallucinatory drug working its way with you, I'll work with you to figure out a way to stop it. But I need you to do some things for me in return."

He stopped talking and took his glasses off. An odd, pained expression crossed his face as he studied them, avoiding looking directly at Rorschach. When he continued, his voice was carefully quiet and Rorschach had the impression that Daniel was suppressing some type of outburst. "Here's the deal, and there is no room for argument. After walking out of my life and disappearing for six years without a single word from you to let me know you were still alive, I think I'm justified in asking you for a favor or two in exchange for my help."

This was something that Rorschach definitely hadn't been expecting. He'd been prepared for anger or outright refusal to help, or most likely, fearful dithering that required Rorschach to coax or threaten. He had not expected Daniel to agree to help for a price. Genuinely nonplussed (and on a deeper level, more than a little offended and hurt), by this development, he covered it by cracking his knuckles and regarding Daniel in stony silence for a long moment. Finally he ground out, "Still listening."

As soon as Rorschach spoke, Daniel expelled a harsh breath as if he'd been holding it. When he continued, his voice contained a hint of the same steel Rorschach had heard earlier in the basement. "Okay. While we are working on this, you stay here. I don't mean that you shouldn't leave the house, but I do want you to sleep here and be around for at least part of the day. If I need to ask you a question or run an idea by you, I don't want to have to spend hours or days trying to locate you. And you'll heal faster if your body doesn't have to also deal with fighting the heat and humidity."

"I want you eat while you're staying here, too--real meals, not just the occasional cold soup or beans straight out of the can. You need the calories, especially when you're injured, you know that."

Rorschach cocked his head as he listened to Daniel's words. His voice tight, he said, "Any other demands?" Daniel shook his head and sighed, "No, that's it."

Unseen behind the mask, Rorschach's eyes narrowed. Resisting the knee-jerk urge to simply refuse outright on general principal, he considered Daniel's conditions. It was a bad precedent to allow Daniel to set rules for their collaboration, and part of him was still insulted and angry that Daniel had ventured there in the first place. But when all was said and done, Daniel's requests weren't that onerous. Rorschach had no doubt that staying here with Daniel would be awkward and uncomfortable, and he chafed at the idea of Daniel trying to control things like this; but Rorschach also knew that he wouldn't solve this case without his help.

Then the practical part of his mind spoke up; the part of Rorschach's psyche that kept track of bolt-holes in derelict buildings and subway offshoots, and scavenged meals of raw eggs and other things found in criminals' refrigerators or cupboards when he broke into their miserable homes to lie in ambush pointed out that Daniel was quite right. His injuries would heal much more quickly if he had a safe, air-conditioned place in which to do so, and steady access to ample and unspoiled food. And with that, he grudgingly acknowledged the obvious best choice in this situation. "Agreed, Daniel."

"Oh, well...good!" Daniel looked surprised and pleased, and he smiled at Rorschach as he wiped down the suture needle with alcohol and repacked it, along with the remaining sutures, in the medical kit. A sudden thought seemed to strike him and he started rummaging in the kit, saying, "You know, I have some extra strength anti-inflammatory medication and some pain pills left over from when I hurt my back last year. You should at least consider taking the ibuprofen tonight, before your muscles stiffen up completely. Or, if you don't want to take pills, you could use one of these if the pain gets really bad during the night and you can't sleep." He brought out a flat yellow box with red lettering on it. Rorschach recognized the box and reached out to take it from Daniel. The fading red text on the box read 'Morphine Syrettes - Morphine Tartrate, 5 Tubes'.

The military surplus morphine was something Daniel had always carried in the medical kit for emergencies, during the old days. Turning the box over to look at the back of it, Rorschach said, "Remember these. Had to use one on each of us after that factory explosion."

Daniel nodded. "Oh, yeah, I remember it all too well. We both got burned and you broke your arm in three places. That's the same box, actually. There should be a few left."

Rorschach opened the box. There were two tubes left inside. He shook one out and examined it, turning it around in his fingers. Rorschach didn't trust the newer pills and medicinal syrups, because one never knew what was being slipped into them in the factories. But these military-issue morphine syrettes carried with them the honorable cachet of association with the American armed forces and, more importantly, with his own lost father. This was something his father might have used if injured while in the service, working for the President.

He could tell that the pain from his cracked ribs was going to make it difficult to fall asleep. Rorschach wasn't willing to chance the prescription pills, but the styrettes were a possibility. He handed the box back to Daniel. "Will consider it, Daniel. Leave them out."

Despite his myriad aches and pains, his unaccustomedly full stomach was making him a little logy, and right now Rorschach wanted nothing more than to rest somewhere dark and quiet, to digest his meal and everything else that had happened in the last hour. When he spoke again, his voice was more tired than tense. "Should get some sleep now, Daniel. You, too."

***

Dan smiled at Rorschach, vastly relieved (and still not quite believing) that he'd agreed to stay. "You're right, we should both get some sleep. You're, uh, welcome to the couch. Or, if you'd be more comfortable in a room of your own, just give me a few minutes to clear off the bed in the spare room."

"Couch is fine."

"Couch it is, then. I'll grab some sheets and a pillow, it'll only take a minute."

Dan quickly made up the couch, leaving the morphine styrettes (along with the pills and a glass of water, just in case) on the coffee table next to the couch. Then he went back to the laundry room to hang what was still wearable of Rorschach's clothing up to dry. He didn't dare put any of the garments in the dryer, not in their condition. Even with the washer cycle set to gentle, some of the tearing had been made worse by the machine's action. Being tumbled in the dryer would only compound the damage.

Shaking his head at the threadbare condition of Rorschach's uniform, Dan examined the stained remnants of the once-white dress shirt, now a ragged mess of tattered cloth. _Yeesh. The rest of it's still wearable, but this one's beyond hope. In the morning I'll go in the closet and dig out one of my old shirts. It'll still be too big, but it will do for now. When I go out tomorrow I'll have to remember to stop and pick up a shirt in his size._

When Dan returned from the laundry room, Rorschach was already in the living room lying on the couch with his mask pushed up over his nose, unmoving. Dan wondered if he were already asleep. He shut off the living room light and murmured, "Good night" into the darkened room.

Dan stopped to turn off the kitchen lights on his way upstairs. As he did, he hesitated; hand on the kitchen light switch, and looked at the medical kit and scattered fragments of bandage and tape on the kitchen table. His gaze moved from the table to the pantry door, and he frowned. The basement called to him loudly tonight, full of dusty shrouded albatross ghosts and Dan wasn't sure who he was talking to when he said, "I'm sorry" into the empty kitchen. There was no answer, of course. He shut off the light and went to bed.

***

Rorschach lay on Daniel's couch, mask pushed above his nose to allow freedom to breathe, and listened in the darkness to the sounds of Daniel's house; the hum of the air conditioning, the occasional creak as it settled between the humid heat outside and the dry coolness inside. Occasionally he shivered, still reacting to the ghostly sensation of Daniel's fingers moving over his skin, handling him so very gently, stroking arnica salve into his bruises; the first time in years that anyone had touched him kindly.

And none of it should matter to Rorschach, who was beyond these things now; it was simply first aid. But he could still feel Daniel's hand on his side; its warmth sinking into his skin and causing an aching tightness in his chest that had nothing to do with his bruised ribs.

With a sharp exhale, he gritted his teeth and levered himself up enough to reach the tabletop. He grabbed one of the morphine tartrate syrettes, pulled off the top and broke the seal. Then he punched the needle into his upper arm and injected himself.


	18. Chapter 18

Rorschach settled back into Daniel's soft couch and shifted fretfully, trying to find the least uncomfortable position while he waited for the painkiller to kick in. The drug seeped slowly into his system, dulling the sharpest edges of his pain. The events of the evening blurred into soft-focus and became less disturbing, allowing him to finally relax enough to fall asleep. As he dozed off, Rorschach could still feel the heat of Daniel's hand, branded into his side. He slid gradually deeper into sleep and once there, he dreamed.

***

He stood under a full moon in the courtyard between the derelict buildings where he'd been attacked. Rorschach looked around and was astonished to see Daniel there too, standing alone in the middle of the courtyard, looking bookish and lost in his argyle sweater vest and tan suit coat.

As he watched, Daniel knelt down on the ground with his back to Rorschach and began sweeping his hands over the trash and broken concrete, obviously searching for something. Alert for lurking enemies, Rorschach hurried toward Daniel, who seemed unaware of him until Rorschach called his name. When he did, Daniel stopped feeling around in the dirt and straightened up. His voice warm and pleased, Daniel said, "Rorschach!" and stood up, brushing dirt off his pants legs before turning around.

When Daniel's face came into full view, Rorschach's breath hitched and he stopped dead in his tracks, transfixed by the ragged holes where Daniel's eyes had been. Daniel was still wearing his glasses; moonlight reflected off the lenses and wire rims, striking tiny wet glints inside the dark caverns behind them. Daniel smiled at him as Rorschach choked and backed away, swallowing hard against a surge of nausea and horrified pity.

Still smiling, Daniel said. "Hey, buddy. Where are you going? Come here and help me look for it, will you? I can't see very well tonight."

Unable to watch the reflected moonlight pick out the interior contours of Daniel's hollowed-out eye sockets, Rorschach turned and fled from the revenant vision. He tripped over a chunk of concrete and twisted rebar and fell, landing painfully on one knee. Retching, he clawed his mask up over his mouth, just in time to avoid befouling it as he vomited up a stream of bile and a darker substance that he realized with alarm was blood. He heaved again, and this time the taste of charcoal and copper flooded his mouth as he brought up a slurry of ash and blood.

Coughing and spitting and shot through with horror, he scrambled to his feet and ran. At the mouth of the alley that led to the street, he stopped, compelled to look back. Like some shambling creature from a monster movie, Daniel was walking slowly toward him, hands held out as if he were searching the air in front of him; feeling his way along (which Rorschach supposed, with the shrinking part of himself that was still rational, was the truth).

The sight of Daniel blindly making his way toward him sent a spur of pity through Rorschach that pierced the haze of horrified revulsion and dispersed much of the initial panic that had sent him skittering away from Daniel. Torn between running away and returning to help Daniel, Rorschach stopped. He waited, trembling, up on the balls of his feet and poised to flee, the acrid taste of bile and ash thick in his mouth.

A black shadow skimmed across the moonlit ground and Rorschach flinched as he looked up and saw a silent winged shape gliding out of the sky, clawed feet extended. As he watched, the huge owl veered from its course and dove directly at Daniel, who was still shuffling sightlessly along, completely unaware of his danger. The sight of the owl stooping to attack broke Rorschach's paralysis and he ran toward his ex-partner, shouting "Daniel! Above you, look out!"

Grinning fiercely, Daniel turned his bleeding sightless face skyward, his teeth gleaming white in the moonlight. Rorschach sprinted, but knew he wouldn't get there in time. He saw Daniel reach upward as the owl dove toward his face, the movement almost too quick for Rorschach to register. Rorschach's second warning shout died in his throat as he skidded to a halt, staring in disbelief as Daniel snatched the owl out of the air as easily as a child catching a falling snowflake.

The startled raptor shrieked as Daniel clutched it to his chest and dropped down to one knee, curling his upper body almost lovingly over the screeching bird. The posture looked protective, but as Rorschach watched the owl thrash in Daniel's grip, he realized that it was anything but.

There was a crunch and a gush of blood spurted between Daniel's fingers, and Rorschach cried out as Daniel buried his face into the mass of gore and feathers. It looked as if Daniel was tearing at the owl with his teeth, maybe even eating it, and Rorschach whispered " _No_ ," as a vision of other blood-flecked white teeth crunching fragile bones stirred and raised its head.

Daniel stood and dropped the crumpled bundle of bloody feathers and guts to the ground. Breath whistling between clenched teeth, Rorschach saw Daniel shuck off his suit coat and use it to wipe blood and feathers away from his face. Daniel then took off his glasses, wadded them up with the ruined coat and casually tossed them both aside. Frozen in place, Rorschach watched as Daniel turned and walked briskly toward him, golden eyes bright in his blood-smeared face.

Something wet ran down the side of his face and along his neck, dribbling down his chest. Wondering if he were bleeding, Rorschach put a hand up to his face. To his dismay, his searching fingertips found a large flap of what felt like skin hanging off of his cheek. For a moment he couldn't understand why it didn't hurt, then he pulled his hand away and saw that it was dripping white and black fluid, and realized that it wasn't skin peeling from his cheek. As he stared at his hand, the piece of black-streaked white latex fell down, hitting the ground with a wet _plop_. He cried out in fear as he felt something slide down the back of his head and reached behind himself to clutch at it. When he did, the mask came apart in his hands, tearing like wet tissue paper and falling away, exposing him.

Suddenly right in front of him, Daniel looked at Rorschach with vast, hot gold eyes and grinned, softer and less feral this time. Rorschach cringed and turned his head away, bringing his hands up in a desperate attempt to hide his features. But his mask, his true face, was gone and Daniel was far, far too close, and now he could finally see Kovacs' pathetic human visage in all its foolish-looking, disgustingly flawed weakness.

As one of Daniel's hands closed tight as a manacle around his wrist, he realized that Daniel was wearing Nite Owl's gauntlets. Rorschach watched, frozen, as Daniel brought his other hand up to his mouth and bit at the fingertips, dragging the gauntlet off with his teeth. If he'd been more coherent, Rorschach would have been ashamed of the thin whine that issued from his throat when he saw that Daniel's exposed hand was now thin and leathery, with scaly sticklike fingers that ended in long gleaming black talons and were not even remotely human.

Tearing his eyes away from Daniel's transformed hand, he looked up past Daniel's new eyes to see that his hair had changed too; it was wilder now, with barred feathers threaded through it, tufting his hair up into pointed wisps that imitated the ears of Nite Owl's hood. The tone of his voice dropping and becoming low and intimate, Daniel crooned, "Thanks, buddy. That's much better. Now, come here."

Shaking like prey in a raptor's grip, Rorschach made another high, thin noise as Daniel leaned in and ran leathery fingers gently over his throat and chest. The talons hooked into his scarf, which was soaked with fluid from his destroyed mask, and pulled it away. With a flick of his hand, Daniel shook the sodden material off his talons and leaned in even closer, pressing his soft belly against Rorschach's.

His clawed fingers pulled Rorschach's coat, jacket, and vest open. Rorschach went completely still, shuddering as Daniel's leathery fingers explored his chest. He gasped as Daniel's claws pierced his skin and sank into him. Rorschach knew it should be excruciating, but there was no pain, just a weighty warm sensation where the claws went in, as if a heated stone was pressing down on his chest.

Rorschach groaned as he felt the talons move under his skin, searching. There was still no pain, just a heavy, almost voluptuous heat that spread through his body and down his nerves, bright slivers of energy that followed the seeking talons.

Daniel moved his hand around his ribcage, golden predator's eyes boring intently into Rorschach's (no, not Rorschach's; his face lay in tatters on the filthy concrete. Daniel was looking into Kovacs'--no, into _Walter's_ ) dead eyes, and all Rorschach could do was shake, his strength shredded and fallen along with the scraps of his mask. Suddenly, Daniel grinned, bright and ferocious.

"There it is," Daniel murmured. He moved his face in against Rorschach's, nuzzling, and whispered, lips brushing his cheek, "It's beating so fast". Then he brought his mouth down over Rorschach's, exhaling a hot gust redolent with the scent of sandalwood and blood into Rorschach's mouth. Slender curved claws slid painlessly further into his chest, parting muscle fibers and punching through his thoracic cavity to pierce his heart.

***

Rorschach woke and clamped his jaws shut on the thin doglike wail issuing from some deep well of horror inside him, cutting it off in mid-cry. Heart pounding, he listened to the faint echo of his cry, one hand pressed against his chest as if to make sure his heart was still caged within his ribs and not leaping out of it. His other hand was pressed into his groin, palming his erection.

Before he could stop himself, he thrust up into his hand and the resulting spike of pleasure made him hiss. A fresh stab of pain from his injured back and ribs mingled with the pleasure, curling around it and making it sharper and more powerful. He hardened painfully and groaned, dragging the heel of his hand up and down over his disgustingly engorged member several times, rubbing in a steady rhythm. Then he woke up fully to what he was doing, and his moan became an exclamation of distress.

Rorschach pulled his hand abruptly away from his disobedient flesh and clutched a fistful of sheet, twisting it. Panting shallowly, he made himself lie still, gritting his teeth as his over-sensitized flesh strained against the soft fabric covering it.

This was unacceptable. Completely and utterly unacceptable. Another disturbing dream featuring Daniel, this one more far physically upsetting than the first. If he was going to stay here as promised while Daniel helped him track down the answer to these bird killings, he had to get a rein on himself immediately.

Rorschach resolved to avoid taking any more morphine. The drug had obviously eroded his self-control and let his body's subconscious degenerate urges run unchecked within his nightmare. He leveled an angry look into the darkness toward where he knew the remaining morphine styrette lay on the table. He wouldn't allow that particular temptation to get the better of him again.

He pulled Rorschach's face completely down, covering Kovacs' weak and human mouth and took comfort from the feeling of it settling protectively over his vulnerable throat. His breathing calmed and he concentrated on getting back to sleep, but it was difficult. The pressure of the sheets against his arousal was light but still distracting enough to make falling asleep impossible. Rorschach ground his teeth hard enough to send sparks of pain through his jaws and concentrated on controlling his breathing, waiting for the unwelcome heat in his groin to subside and leave him alone so he could sleep.

While Rorschach waited for his rebellious body to calm, unbeknownst to him, upstairs Daniel was dreaming as well, turning uneasily in his vast and long-unshared bed.

***

Dan dreamed he was back in Africa with Joe Woodward in the Great Rift Valley, watching thousands of Lesser Flamingos rise up from Lake Natron in a massive rolling wave of black-tipped cream and rose, sun flashing pink light off pale plumage and giving it a luster like a pearl's nacre.

He stood at Joe's shoulder, watching the gorgeous spectacle in pleased awe as the huge flock wheeled into the sky. Joe turned and threw an arm around Dan's shoulders, smiling at him in shared delight, and leaned in close to say something about it being a wink from God's eye.

Looking down, Dan's grin faded as he noticed some oddly gnarled branches sticking out of the alkaline lakeside mud. Then he realized, with a nauseated jolt, that they were fingers. He knelt down and started to dig mud away from the half-buried hand. As he dug, he started to unearth trash from the mud; fast food wrappers, old cans, used condoms and a torn subway map; the kind of litter that accumulated in New York City alleys.

Swallowing hard against a sick chill, he saw that the fragment of subway map was heavily marked with cryptic notations and Dan recognized the chickenscratch handwriting. He grasped the unearthed hand and pulled it, along with part of a torn and flayed forearm, from the stinking muck. Examining the hands' calloused fingers with their short-bitten nails, Dan brushed mud away from the rest of the limb, already knowing what he'd find. Through the tears that suddenly blurred his vision, Dan saw a familiar and distinctive J-shaped scar on the forearm just above the wrist, where a razor-wielding thug had carved a deep gash into his partner's arm back in 1968.

Joe squatted next to him with a curious 'hmm', as if Dan were holding a particularly interesting fragment of eggshell. As Dan stared in swelling horror and grief at what he was holding, Joe placed a gentle hand on the back of Dan's neck. Then Joe's grip tightened painfully, digging in and making Dan gasp and look at him. Joe pointed behind Dan and his voice dropped in register and turned dark and full of gravel as he said, "Look behind you, Daniel. We need to move."

***

Dan awoke to the dark silence of his empty bedroom, heart galloping. _Holy shit,_ he thought, massaging his chest. _What the hell was that?_

After a while, his heart and breathing returned to normal and he lay back down and tried to go back to sleep. Sleep refused to return, though, and Dan finally admitted defeat and got out of bed.

He threw on a robe and crept downstairs, avoiding the creaky steps on the staircase and walking noiselessly down the hall. Dan stopped in the doorway to the living room. Looking in, he could just make out the dim forms of the couch and its occupant, limned in the faint illumination from the hallway nightlight.

Relieved to see that Rorschach was still there, Dan stared at the lumpy outline under the thin cotton sheet, unable to see for sure whether it was moving at all, or if Rorschach was even breathing.

Unable to shake the residue of horror from his nightmare, he watched and listened intently, his apprehension growing when several minutes ticked by with no sound or movement. He was almost to the point of turning on the living room light and risking Rorschach's anger at being woken up for no reason when the outline on the couch finally shifted slightly, and issued a tiny groan. Dan relaxed then, letting out the breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding in. He turned to go.

"Daniel?" The voice that came from the darkened living room was quiet, but Dan still jumped. "Something wrong, Daniel?" There was an odd tension in Rorschach's voice, but no anger. His speech was a bit slurred; Dan suspected that he'd broken down and used the morphine.

Shaken with relief, Dan smiled and his tone was gentle when he answered. "Nothing, man. Just making sure you're all right. It'll be light out soon. Go back to sleep." Dan headed back upstairs and crawled back into bed. This time when he slept, he did not dream.

***

Outside the brownstone, the sky faded from star-studded black to indigo. Tendrils of peach and gold light began to push back the shadows, inch by slow inch.

Along with the first pale dawn light, there rose a chorus of chirps and twittering calls issued from hundreds of thousands of feathered throats. Some chimed sweet, some harsh as a rusty gate, some rang high and wild while others were rich and liquid, as beautiful as any maestro flutist's performance. The sound rose and swelled to a roar, louder than any of the people who were awake at this delicate hour had ever heard. Many of them stopped to listen, feeling various degrees of awe. For some, a tiny atavistic shudder rose from deep inside along with the awe, like some fearful note struck from a dark internal tuning fork.

And the countless wild Norway rats, those swift alley shadows in their brown and black-ticked coats, stopped their endless search for food and listened, whiskers tense and alert, as the noise grew. Then, as if an electric current had swept across the surface of the city, they quivered as one and darted for the safety of their burrows; vanished in a twinkling.

There was a low swelling roar as the singing, chirping silhouettes rose up from their night perches and the sky over the city grew dark, but not with clouds.

***

Inside the brownstone, the din outside was deadened and hushed by closed double-hung windows and the hum of air conditioners. Both of its occupants, asleep once again, turned restlessly but were not awakened by the muffled thunder outside.


End file.
